Osiris Oliphant

“Without fortune, old age in Civilization becomes for both sexes an anticipated hell, and yet the great majority of old people are without fortune. People pretend to love old people, and to speak frankly no one loves them; everything that surrounds them, except childhood, proscribes and mocks them in secret, and in the class of villagers and artisans, to whom they are a burden, they are mistreated, they are openly cursed. As for the present, old age is most often only a long torture. Thus life in Civilization is only a painful journey to arrive at an even more unfortunate lodging since the goal is old age.”
― Charles Fourier

“Each time I happen to recall—nostalgically—the surrealist rebellion as expressed in its original purity and intransigence, it is the personality of Antonin Artaud that stands out in its dark magnificence, it is a certain intonation in his voice that injects specks of gold into his whispering voice. … Antonin Artaud: I do not have to account in his stead for what he has experienced nor for what he has suffered. … I know that Antonin Artaud saw, the way Rimbaud, as well as Novalis and Arnim before him, had spoken of seeing. It is of little consequence, ever since the publication of Aurelia, that what was seen this way does not coincide with what is objectively visible. The real tragedy is that the society to which we are less and less honored to belong persists in making it an inexpiable crime to have gone over to the other side of the looking glass. In the name of everything that is more than ever close to my heart, I cheer the return to freedom of Antonin Artaud in a world where freedom itself must be reinvented. Beyond all the mundane denials, I place all my faith in Antonin Artaud, that man of prodigies.”
― André Breton

“To Time. (1615)

Thou Register of old Antiquities,
Observer of the worlds iniquities,
Surveying life from birth till Death intoombe,
From Adam's making, to the day of doom:
That in thy restless cunning dost admit
Of actions lawful, or of things unfit,
And hast thy head behind of purpose ball'd,
Because thou never wilt be back recall'd;
But wear'st a lock before I understand,
On which I never yet could lay my hand.
I have expected (thou grave ancient father)
Thy helping hand, and I protest the rather,
Because they say that Time by turns doth go,
And hitherto I have not found it so:
Therefore for some good turn, one of these days,
I challenge thee, or I'll disprove thy praise,
And I write of thee according as I find,
That thorow age thou art both ball'd and blind;
Find out a time, good Time, for to relieve me,
For at this time, Time very bad doth grieve mee.”
― Samuel Rowlands, The Melancholie Knight

“Civilization is built upon the unhappiness of others.”
― Charles Fourier