Quotes from book
Journey to the End of the Night

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-ferdinand CélineOriginal title Voyage au bout de la nuit (French, 1932)

Journey to the End of the Night is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work follows the life of Ferdinand Bardamu.

“This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being so impoverished which are given to those of us who don’t sell anything to anybody.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“Love is the infinite placed within the reach of poodles. I have my dignity!”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“The best thing to do when you're in this world, don't you agree, is to get out of it. Crazy or not, scared or not.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 5
Context: Then I fell sick, I was delirious, driven mad by fear, they said at the hospital. Maybe so. The best thing to do when you're in this world, don't you agree, is to get out of it. Crazy or not, scared or not.

“If you aren't rich you should always look useful.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

“Medicine is a thankless profession. When you get paid by the rich, you feel like a flunky, by the poor like a thief. How can you take a fee from people who can’t afford to eat or go to the movies? Especially when they’re at their last gasp. It’s not easy. You let it ride. You get soft-hearted. And your ship goes down.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“It is of men, and of them only, that one should always be frightened.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavour, it's indispensable.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

[6]
Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

“We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“There's no tyrant like a brain.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“When it becomes really impossible to get away and sleep, then the will to live evaporates of its own accord.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced, the motives supply themselves.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“A God who counts minutes and pennies, a desperate sensual God, who grunts like a pig. A pig with golden wings, who falls and falls, always belly side up, ready for caresses, that’s him, our master. Come, kiss me.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 5

“I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

[6]
Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

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