The Hermit Quotes

“I thought that it was strange to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that it was abnormal for people NOT to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously. Perhaps it's because everyone, all the others, are convinced in some unformulated, irrational way that one day everything will be made clear. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me.”
― Eugène Ionesco, The Hermit

“Within the confines of the great, universal prison, I had made for myself a smaller prison, a prison made to order. I had carved out for myself a little niche in which I could live. It was tiny, I had no doubt about that point. But at least it was made to measure, to my measure. A little niche in a prison that kept me from seeing the prison. A prison without work? Was I bored? Was I resigned? Tired, no doubt.”
― Eugène Ionesco, The Hermit

“In spite of all these concerns, in the morning when I left my hotel I went joyfully down the stairs, whistling all the while, and emerged into the street at ten or eleven, whenever I wanted. It was fun, I felt happy, and then I realized that it wasn’t all much fun and I wasn’t all that happy. Had a weight been lifted from my back? The weight of living? I had been born bowed down with grief. The universe seemed to me a kind of enormous cage, or rather a big prison, with the sky a ceiling, and the horizon walls beyond which there had to be something else. But what? I was in a vast space, and yet it was locked. Or rather, I had the feeling I was in a huge ship, and the sky above was an enormous cover. There was a crowd of prisoners, and as far as I could tell most of them were unaware of their condition. What was there beyond the walls? Well, when you really thought about it, there was a positive side to the picture: the daily prison, the little jail inside the big one, had opened its doors to me. Now I was able to stroll at will along the main thoroughfares, the broad avenues of the big jail. It was a world comparable to a zoo in which the animals enjoyed a kind of semi-freedom, with man-made mountains, artificial woods, and imitation lakes, but at the far reaches there were still the same old fences.”
― Eugène Ionesco, The Hermit

“Life is beautiful: a whole existence of old papers and office dust; the bed in my hotel room which often remained unmade from morn till night when I came home from the office, because of the dearth of hired help, the only maid being an aged hunchback who did the best she could. The rude awakenings in the morning; the mad rush to the office in the hope of still finding my time card; the joy at reaching the office on time so that I could sign it; the anger and frustration on those mornings when I reached the office thirty seconds after the card had been taken away - all that seemed to me to be enveloped in a kind of happiness that I had not previously noted, as all of a sudden I found a kind of beauty in the dust, the crowded street, the mass of people hurrying like me to work, the hundreds and hundreds of gray faces, faces which were but clouds doubtless concealing the sun that we all bear within us, if only we knew it. The past is always tender and beautiful, something to be looked upon with sorrow, whose qualities we notice only when they are gone. We need a certain perspective, and that goes for pen-pushers and statesmen alike, millionaires or tramps. It’s true, it’s true: we all contain within ourselves a world full of sunshine, a world in which joy is constantly ready and waiting to unfurl, if only we realized it, I mean if only we realized it in time. How lovely ugliness is, how happy sadness, and boredom is due only to our ignorance! The iciest cold cannot resist the warmth of the human heart. Assuming one knows which button to push in order to light it. In short, we look back nostalgically on everything, which proves without question that it was beautiful.”
― Eugène Ionesco, The Hermit