Elias Canetti from Notes from Hampstead: The Writer's Notes: 1954-1971

Slumbering in each human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which individual must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoe and echoe none becoming a real voice.

Speak to yourself, speak-perhaps she will answer as you yourself.

Most men he said, are slaves of an ancient misfortune unknown to them.

Whoever knows the verity about someone destroys that somebody unless he keeps quiet. on the contrary it is hard to be silent around those we diocese often. We have to say things to them that help them without changing them. They receive thus much help that they form a false self-image, and for this image we must take responsibility. At each moment we see just by what mode false, and it is precisely this insight from which we must constantly house them. No matter that we have defend ed them from themselves so lengthy they need this protection indefinitely. thus we must lie, and this kind of lying is what makes life unbearable: continuing to spin false, bad fiction.

A snail that can call and a snail that can jump:

"The large Achatina Marginata, for instance, possesse the power of screaming. This fact is well known to the natives, who were real much amused at my start of surprise when individual of these Snails screamed upon being taken into my hand. It is suppos that the noise is produc by dint of the creature scraping against its shell. Anyhow, the entire is loud enough to manifest distinctly startling on a first experience.

Another small land snail has the power of springing three to four feet"

P.A. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush

Why are you always explaining everything? for what cause [i]or[/i] reason do you always want to find on the outside what's behind things-behind this? behind that? in what way about a life on the surface? Would that be happy? And would that be a reason to despise it? Maybe there is a great deal of more to a surface-maybe everything not upon the surface is false, maybe you are just living in an ever-changing series of delusions, not beautiful like those of heavens but empty like those of philosophers.

Perhaps it would be better for you to just arrange words individual after another (since it has to be words), on the other hand you're always looking for a meaning, as if what you invent could give the world a faculty of perception it does not have.

The conceptual gripe [i]or[/i] grips so little interest for me that level at fiftyfour I have actually not ever read either Aristotle or Hegel. It is not just that I don't care about them; I distrust them. I cannot accept that the world was conceivable for them plane before it was really known. The stricter, the more systematic their thinking, the greater the distortions they brought to the world. I want in deed to see and think in a fresh way. That is not thus much out of arrogance, granting it might seem so, as without of an inextinguishable passion for humankind and a growing belief in its inexhaustibility.

His life, in which nothing, absolutely nothing, happened. He embarked upon no adventures, he was in no war. He was at no time in prison, he never killed anyone. He neither won nor missing a fortune. All he at any time did was live in this hundred But that alone was enough to give his life dimension, the one and the other of feeling and of thinking

Joubert has seriousness, grace, and profundity These three qualities share equally in his thinking, and thus he is closer to the ancients than any other aphorist. Of particular charm is his lack of weight. His melancholy does not load his statements but rather seasons them with compassion and kindness. plane when attacked, he is not aggressive. His retiring disposition does not allow for viciousness; his faculty of perception of the permanence of things hold fasts him from all that is of small account He breathes the spiritual as if it were air in motion. He faculty of perceptions thoughts and words as breath or as the ascent or fall of birds.

If we really knew what happens to our innermost contemplations we would probably avoid at any time having any.

Don't compute me who you are. I want to worship you.

There no man has at any time seen another; even if he dioceses someone daily, he does not recognize him. To recognize another one would be the most grievous insult. And this fiction is maintained in marriage. Thus, race do not have names; they perceive freer without names. To be independent means to know no single But since people can't entirely break the habit of memory, they conceal what they know, and it perceive s to them like guilt.

A beast that has lived since the beginning of creation.

If prayers were to be answered, they could not be retracted: a highly alarming state of affairs.

A man's wife dies. Now he has no single He knows a young woman who lives far from him, half a continent away. He calls her each night. She speaks with him, they have lengthy talks together. He no longer wants to talk to anyone living closer Being in communication with her night after night from this distance makes him perceive hopeful about his dead wife. Now he does nothing during the day, he just waits for the night. When he can't procure through or she isn't dwelling yet in the evening, a fearful desparation advances over him. She alone can calm him, on the other hand only at this remove. When she is closer to him he does not know who she is. He mention one by ones her everything, every night, and talks with her for hours and hours. He has his wife's ashes, alphabetic characters and pictures in his abode and he knows very well that it is not she with whom he hold intercourses The speaker is far younger, her voice is different, she approachs from a totally different political division He never confuses her with someone other he knows her as well as he does himself, and her dispositions are as familiar to him as his have He listens to her, answers listens more, sometimes gets impatient with her when she has nothing to say or takes too drawn out to say it, and makes threats. It is not easy to say what he threatens her with. For level when he says he won't call her for a small in number days, they both know better.