Cassandre

“Will you dare to say so?–Have you never erred?–Have you never felt one impure sensation?–Have you never indulged a transient feeling of hatred, or malice, or revenge?–Have you never forgot to do the good you ought to do,–or remembered to do the evil you ought not to have done?–Have you never in trade overreached a dealer, or banquetted on the spoils of your starving debtor?–Have you never, as you went to your daily devotions, cursed from your heart the wanderings of your heretical brethren,–and while you dipped your fingers in the holy water, hoped that every drop that touched your pores, would be visited on them in drops of brimstone and sulphur?–Have you never, as you beheld the famished, illiterate, degraded populace of your country, exulted in the wretched and temporary superiority your wealth has given you,–and felt that the wheels of your carriage would not roll less smoothly if the way was paved with the heads of your countrymen? Orthodox Catholic–old Christian–as you boast yourself to be,–is not this true?–and dare you say you have not been an agent of Satan? I tell you, whenever you indulge one brutal passion, one sordid desire, one impure imagination–whenever you uttered one word that wrung the heart, or embittered the spirit of your fellow-creature–whenever you made that hour pass in pain to whose flight you might have lent wings of down–whenever you have seen the tear, which your hand might have wiped away, fall uncaught, or forced it from an eye which would have smiled on you in light had you permitted it–whenever you have done this, you have been ten times more an agent of the enemy of man than all the wretches whom terror, enfeebled nerves, or visionary credulity, has forced into the confession of an incredible compact with the author of evil, and whose confession has consigned them to flames much more substantial than those the imagination of their persecutors pictured them doomed to for an eternity of suffering! Enemy of mankind!' the speaker continued,–'Alas! how absurdly is that title bestowed on the great angelic chief,–the morning star fallen from its sphere! What enemy has man so deadly as himself? If he would ask on whom he should bestow that title aright, let him smite his bosom, and his heart will answer,–Bestow it here!”
― Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer

“Moi, Hassan, fils de Mohamed le peseur, moi, Jean-Léon de Médicis, circoncis de la main d'un barbier et baptisé de la main d'un pape, on me nomme aujourd'hui l'Africain, mais d'Afrique ne suis, ni d'Europe, ni d'Arabie. On m'appelle aussi le Grenadin, le Fassi, le Zayyati, mais je ne viens d'aucun pays, d'aucune cité, d'aucune tribu. Je suis fils de la route, ma patrie est caravane, et ma vie la plus inattendue des traversées.
Mes poignets ont connu tour à tour les caresses de la soie et les injures de la laine, l'or des princes et les chaînes des esclaves. Mes doigts ont écarté mille voiles, mes lèvres ont fait rougir mille vierges, mes yeux ont vu agoniser des villes et mourir des empires.
De ma bouche, tu entendras l'arabe, le turc, le castillan, le berbère, l'hébreu, le latin et l'italien vulgaire, car toutes les langues, toutes les prières m'appartiennent. Mais je n'appartiens à aucune. Je ne suis qu'à Dieu et à la terre, et c'est à eux qu'un jour prochain je reviendrai.
Et tu resteras après moi, mon fils. Et tu porteras mon souvenir. Et tu liras mes livres. Et tu reverras alors cette scène : ton père, habillé en Napolitain sur cette galée qui le ramène vers la côte africaine, en train de griffonner, comme un marchand qui dresse son bilan au bout d'un long périple.
Mais n'est-ce pas un peu ce que je fais : qu'ai-je gagné, qu'ai-je perdu, que dire au Créancier suprême ? Il m'a prêté quarante années, que j'ai dispersées au gré des voyages : ma sagesse a vécu à Rome, ma passion au Caire, mon angoisse à Fès, et à Grenade vit encore mon innocence.”
― Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly