SO GOOD QUOTES

Incidentally, it is astonishing to see how, in the beginning, man was tempted by pride: he wanted “to be like God” (Gen 3:5); in other words, he wanted to become God without God or against God. That was presumption. Today we are witnessing the opposite temptation: people think it would be better not to exist; this is faint-heartedness.

Two reactions are possible then: losing the sense of time, both past and future, as nihilism does; or else, on the contrary, fleeing the present and taking refuge in the past or in the future.

As a reaction to the gloominess of the present there may indeed be a tendency to cultivate an excessive nostalgia for the successful, well-spent moments of the past. To embellish it, to delight in it, to tell stories about it. When nothing goes well any more in the present, it is so reassuring to become attached to the past, when one “did so many good things”. Then, one tells stories…to oneself or to others. Or else one plunges ahead into the future, since that is the plaything of the imagination and of dreams. Often, however, the flight into the past or the escape into the future produces nothing but sadness and disgust; one finds in them a taste of bitterness and dissatisfaction.

The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault