The Elegance of the Hedgehog in 100+ Books in 2025

Jun 30, 2009 Jenny Thayer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction

I really liked this book! Some new words I didn't know, which is always nice to experience.

As french as it was it had a very Japanese flavor to me, which I think the author would quite like. I could absolutely read this book again. ...more

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May 16, 2010 Jgrace rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-multiple-narrators, faith-philosophy, audio, france, humor, europe, judithg, relationships, jgrace, contemporary-fiction

The Elegance of the Hedgehog- Muriel Barbery
3 stars
This is a very interesting little book. It is probably the most character driven book I’ve ever read. Essentially, there is no plot. The story is told in two voices: Renee, the middle-aged concierge of an exclusive Paris apartment building and Paloma, a 12-year-old genius. Both Renee and Paloma are hiding their true personalities from the world around them. The book is nothing more than the observations
and opinions of these two self-proclaimed ...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Dolly rated it really liked it

Shelves: japan, read-but-not-finished-reviewing, birthday, library, 2016, pets, france-french, russia, education-school, books-for-living-end-of-your-life

interesting quotes (page numbers from paperback edition with ISBN13 9781933372600):

"People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl." (p. 23)

"In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from an unfamiliar piece, a touch of perfection in the flow of human dealings - I lean my head slowly to one side, reflect on the camellia on the moss of the temple, reflect on a cup of tea, while outside the wind is rustling the foliage, the f

interesting quotes (page numbers from paperback edition with ISBN13 9781933372600):

"People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl." (p. 23)

"In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from an unfamiliar piece, a touch of perfection in the flow of human dealings - I lean my head slowly to one side, reflect on the camellia on the moss of the temple, reflect on a cup of tea, while outside the wind is rustling the foliage, the forward rush of life is crystallized in a brilliant jewel of a moment that knows neither projects nor future, human destiny is rescued from the pale succession of days, glows with light at last and, surpassing time, warms my tranquil heart." (p. 106)

"Any game where the goal is to build territory has to be beautiful. There may be phases of combat, but they are only the means to an end, to allow your territory to survive. One of the most extraordinary aspects of the game of go is that it has been proven that in order to win, you must live, but you must also allow the other player to live. Players who are too greedy will lose: it is a subtle game of equilibrium, where you have to get ahead without crushing the other player. In the end, life and death are only the consequences of how well or how poorly you have made your construction." (pp. 113-114)

"...if there is one thing that poor people despise, it is other poor people." (p. 121)

"We have to live with the certainty that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it's now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there's a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity." (pp. 128-129)

"Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant." (p. 143)

"Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty. When you speak, or read, or write, you can tell if you've said or read or written a fine sentence. You can recognize a well-turned phrase or an elegant style. But when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language. When you use grammar you peel back the layers, to see how it is all put together, see it quite naked, in a way." (p. 158)

"...pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language." (p. 160)

"...have our civilizations become so destitute that we can only live in our fear of want? Can we only enjoy our possessions or our senses when we are certain that we shall always be able to enjoy them? Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique; armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives." (p. 163)

"Fascination with intelligence is in itself fascinating, but I don't think it's a value in itself. There are tons of intelligent people out there and there are a lot of retards, too. I'm going to say something really banal, but intelligence, in itself, is neither valuable nor interesting. Very intelligent people have devoted their lives to the question of the sex of angels, for example. But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed." (pp. 166-167)

"There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing." (p. 169)

"There is always the easy way out, although I am loath to use it. I have no children, I do not watch television and I do not believe in God - all paths taken by mortals to make their lives easier. Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them. Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning. Finally, God appeases our animal fears and the unbearable prospect that someday all our pleasures will cease. Thus, as I have neither future nor progeny nor pixels to deaden the cosmic awareness of absurdity, and in the certainty of the end and the anticipation of the void, I believe I can affirm that I have not chosen the easy path." (pp. 176-177)

"I'm no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment during a choir.
When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.
In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song." (p. 185)

"If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of full adulthood, that's like thinking that dressing up as an Indian is going to make you and Indian." (p. 192)

"What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions." (p. 203)

"People are so arrogant, thinking they can coerce nature, escape their destiny of little biological things...and yet they remain so blind to the cruelty of violence of their own way of living, loving, reproducing and making war on their fellow human beings." (p. 238)

"Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there's anything divine about our animal nature. This is the only way we will ever feel that we have been doing something constructive when death comes to get us. Freedom, choice, will, and so on? Chimeras. We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die." (p. 238)

"For the quest for meaning and beauty is hardly a sign that man has an elevated nature, that by leaving behind his animal impulses he will go on to find the justification of his existence in the enlightenment of the spirit: no, it is a primed weapon in the service of a trivial and material goal." (p. 247)

"Don't let the cat out or the concierge in: this is the first principle of socialist ladies." (p. 260)

"...beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death." (p. 272)

"Maybe that's what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying." (p. 273)

"The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship..." (p. 277)

"Poverty is a reaper: it harvests everything inside us that might have made us capable of social intercourse with others, and leaves us empty, purged of feeling, so that we may endure all the darkness of the present day." (p. 288)

"54 years without jewelry do not prepare one for the travails of dressing up." (p. 301)

"I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers." (p. 301)

"I now know what you have to experience before you die: let me tell you. What you have to experience before you die is a driving rain transformed into light." (p. 313)

"I smile to myself, thinking about the big fat windbag who has been my partner through these years of widowhood and solitude, and I smile sadly, tenderly, because, seen from death, our close relations with our domestic animals no longer seem to be something minor to be taken for granted, given their everyday nature; ten years of a lifetime have crystallized in Leo, and I take the measure of how ridiculous, superfluous cats who wander through our lives with all the placidity and indifference of an imbecile are in fact the guardians of life's good and joyful moments, and of its happy web, even beneath the canopy of misfortune." (p. 317)

"Ten years of tea and saying 'vous' to each other and, at the end of it, a warmth in my breast and a hopeless gratitude toward someone or something, life perhaps, for having graced me with your friendship. Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts? Must I die to realize this at last...All those hours drinking tea in the refined company of a great lady who has neither wealth nor palaces, only the bare skin in which she was born - without those hours I would have remained a mere concierge, but instead it was contagious, because the aristocracy of the heart is a contagious emotion, so you made of me a woman who could be a friend..." (p. 318)

new words: ossification, diaphanous, abnegation, deontology, sidereal, duenna, factotum, lavaliere, gudgeon ...more

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Jan 30, 2013 Diane rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

This wasn't a bad book, but just not my cup of tea. It took me forever to read, I read most books in a day or two. I just didn't like the characters. ...more

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