La Panthère des neiges Quotes

“Through the binoculars, I saw it stretch. It lay back down. It was the ruler of its life. It was the expression of this place. Its mere presence signified its “power.” The world was its throne, it filled the space it inhabited. It incarnated that mysterious concept of the king’s body. A true regent is content simply to be. He does not trouble to act, and sees no need to make appearances. His existence is the foundation of his authority.”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“paucity”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“prodigality”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“bon mot.”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“The Finnish snipers claimed to be relaxed, resilient, relentless: the virtues of icy monsters. They were living embodiments of sisu. In Finnish, the word sisu describes the combined qualities of determination and resistance. How could we translate the term? “Spiritual abnegation,” “self-effacement,” “mental resistance”? In the litany of human heroism, ever since Captain Ahab set out to hunt the great white whale, the sniper has been the perfect embodiment of man fixated by a single goal.”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“We stayed then until darkness was complete. The snow leopard dozed, immune to all threats. Other animals seemed like wretched, fearful creatures. A horse bolts at the slightest movement, a cat at the slightest sound, a dog detects an unfamiliar smell and jumps to its feet, an insect takes shelter, a herbivore dreads hearing something move behind it, even the human animal instinctively checks the corners when entering a room. Paranoia is an occupational hazard of living. But the leopard was confident of its absolutism. It dozed, utterly abandoned, since it was untouchable”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“The vultures came in shifts, sentinels to the requiem. The topmost ridges were first to welcome the daylight. A falcon swooped through the valley, scattering its benediction. I was mesmerized by the sentry duty of the carrion birds. They watched to see that all was well on earth: that death took its allotted share of animals and in return left provisions. Below, on the steep slopes that chamfered the gorge, the yaks grazed. Lying in the long grasses, cold, calm and watchful, Léo studied every crag through his binoculars. I was less conscientious. Patience has its limits, and I had come to the end of mine when we reached the canyon. I was busy assigning each animal a rung on the social ladder of the kingdom. The snow leopard was the regent; her status reinforced by her invisibility. She reigned, and therefore had no need to show herself. The prowling wolves were knavish princes; the yaks, richer burghers, warmly attired; the lynxes were musketeers; the foxes country squires; the blue sheep and the wild donkeys were the general populace. The raptors represented the priests, hieratic masters of the heavens and of death. These clerics in plumed livery were not against the idea that things might bode ill for us.”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“I could understand the Mongol desire to leave their dead to rot on the steppes. If my mother had so wished, I would have liked us to lay her body in a valley in the Kunlun Mountains. The carrion birds would have devoured her, only to be devoured in turn by other jaws and dispersed through other bodies—rats, lammergeyers, snakes—leaving an orphaned son to imagine his mother in the beat of a wing, the ripple of snakeskin, the quiver of a fleece.”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“As animals died, the plains were scattered with the torn carcasses left by carrion feeders. Quickly, the skeletons, bleached and burned by ultraviolet light, once again became part of the whirling waltz of ecology. This was one of the great insights of ancient Greece: the world’s energy as Heraclitean fire, part of a closed system, from sky to stones, from grass to flesh, from flesh to earth, under the watchful eye of the sun that offered its photons to the nitrogen cycle. The Bardo Thodol—the Tibetan Book of the Dead—offers a similar theory to that of Heraclitus and the philosophers of flux. Everything passes, everything flows, the wild donkeys run, the wolves hunt, the vultures hover: order, equilibrium, under the sun. A crushing silence. An unforgiving light, few men. A dream.”
― Sylvain Tesson, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet

“Il est plus difficile de vénérer ce dont on jouit déjà que de rêvasser à décrocher les lunes.”
― Sylvain Tesson, La Panthère des neiges

“Les champions de l'espérance appellent "résignation" notre consentement. Ils se trompent. C'est l'amour.”
― Sylvain Tesson, La Panthère des neiges

“L'imprévu ne venant jamais à soi, il faut le traquer partout. Le mouvement féconde l'inspiration. L'ennui court moins vite qu'un homme pressé.”
― Sylvain Tesson, La Panthère des neiges

“L'humanisme est un syndicalisme comme un autre.”
― Sylvain Tesson, La Panthère des neiges

“On pourrait modifier la pensée B139 de Pascal – « Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre » –”
― Sylvain Tesson, La panthère des neiges

“La vie apparut et se distribua à la conquête de la Terre. Le temps s'attaquait à l'espace. Ce fut la complication. Les êtres se ramifièrent, se spécialisèrent, d'éloignèrent les uns des autres, chacun assurant sa perpétuation par la dévoration des autres. L'Evolution inventa des formes raffinées de prédation, de reproduction et de déplacement. Traquer, piéger, tuer, se reproduire fut le motif général. [...] Le soleil avait déjà pris feu. Il fécondait la tuerie de ses propres photons et il mourrait en s'offrant. La vie était le nom donné au massacre en même temps que le requiem du soleil. Si un Dieu était vraiment à l'origine de ce carnaval, il aurait fallu un tribunal de plus haute instance pour le traduire en justice.
Hier, l'homme apparut, champignon à foyer multiple. Son cortex lui donna une disposition inédite: porter au plus haut degré la capacité de détruire ce qui n'était pas lui-même tout en se lamentant d'en être capable. A la douleur s'ajoutait la lucidité. L'horreur parfaite.”
― Sylvain Tesson, La Panthère des neiges

“Une race parfaite pour le monde global : reproductible, uniforme et docile, calibrée aux voracités statistiques”
― Sylvain Tesson, La panthère des neiges