Balthazar Quotes

“Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“We live" writes Pursewarden somewhere, "lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time - not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“I am just a refugee from the long slow toothache of English life. It is terrible to love life so much you can hardly breathe!”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“The steward, according to custom, had stopped all the clocks. This, in the language of Narouz, said, "Your stay with us is so brief, let us not be reminded of the flight of the hours. God made eternity. Let us escape from the despotism of time altogether." These ancient and hereditary politenesses filled Nessim with emotion.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“اننا عادة ما نولد لكي نحب هؤلاء الذين يصيبوننا بالجراح اكثر من غيرهم
رباعية الإسكندرية - بلتازار”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“But I love to feel events overlapping each other, crawling over one another like wet crabs in a basket”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“Any concentration of the will displaces life and gives it bias in motion. Reality, he believed, was always trying to copy the imagination of man, from which it derived.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“Each of our five senses contains an art.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“ويكتب بورسواردن: "فى البداية نسعى كى نملأ بالحب فراغ ذواتنا ونستمتع لحظة قصيرة بوهم الكمال. لكن ذلك ليس إلا وهما. حيث إن هذا المخلوق الغريب الذى أعتقدنا أنه سيصلنا بجسد العالم، قد نجح فى النهاية، فى فصلناعنه فصلا تاما. الحب يصل ثم يفرق وإلا فكيف لنا أن ننمو؟”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“I love the French edition with its uncut pages. I would not want a reader too lazy to use a knife on me.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“Landscape-tones: brown to bronze, steep skyline, low cloud, pearl ground with shadowed oyster and violet reflections. The lion-dust of desert: prophets’ tombs turned to zinc and copper at sunset on the ancient lake.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“إننى أعتقد، أنه من الأفضل لنا أن ندير ظهورنا بوضوح للكلمات الرنانة مثل "الجمال" و"الحقيقة" وما الى ذلك. هل ترين ما أرى؟ إننا سخفاء للغاية، وضعاف العقول عندما نتناول أمور الحياة،لكننا عمالقة عندما نحكم على الكون.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“إن تداخل الحقائق هو الطريقة الوحيدة كى تكون أمينا مع الزمن، حاشد فى كل لحظة باحتمالات لانهائية التكاثر. والحياة تتوقف على فعل الاختيار، أبدية الدينونة، وأبدية الانتقاء.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“We must always defend Plato to Aristotle and vice versa because if they should lose touch with each other we should be lost. The dimorphism of the psyche produced them both.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“To intercalate realities’ writes Balthazar ‘is the only way to be faithful to Time, for at every moment in Time the possibilities are endless in their multiplicity. Life consists in the act of choice. The perpetual reservations of judgement and the perpetual choosing.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“I am an expert in love — every man believes himself to be one: but particularly the Englishman.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“Moths are attracted by the flame of personality. So are vampires. Artists should take note and beware.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“(One of the great paradoxes of love. Concentration on the love-object and possession are the poisons.)”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“We live’ writes Pursewarden somewhere ‘lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.’ Something of this order.…”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar