Jacques Lusseyran Quotes

• Our fate is shaped from within ourselves outward, never from without inward.

  Jacques Lusseyran

  Fate, Inward

  Jacques Lusseyran (2016). “Against the Pollution of the I: On the Gifts of Blindness, the Power of Poetry, and the Urgency of Awareness”, p.29, New World Library

  55 Copy quote

• Unhappiness, I saw then, comes to each of us because we think ourselves at the center of the world, because we have the miserable conviction the we alone suffer to the point of unbearable intensity. Unhappiness is always to feel oneself imprisoned in one's own skin, in one's own brain.

  Jacques Lusseyran

  Thinking, Brain, Suffering

  Jacques Lusseyran (2016). “Against the Pollution of the I: On the Gifts of Blindness, the Power of Poetry, and the Urgency of Awareness”, p.143, New World Library

  28 Copy quote

• I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light.

  Jacques Lusseyran

  Jealous, Eye, Light

  Jacques Lusseyran (2014). “And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II”, p.15, New World Library

  24 Copy quote

• I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads.

  Jacques Lusseyran

  Children, Differences, Adults

  Jacques Lusseyran (2014). “And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II”, p.7, New World Library

  22 Copy quote

• People often say that blindness sharpens hearing, but I don't think this is so. My ears were hearing no better, but I was making better use of them. Sight is a miraculous instrument offering us all the riches of physical life. But we get nothing in this world without paying for it, and in return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don't even suspect. These were the gifts I received in such abundance.

  Jacques Lusseyran

  Giving Up, Thinking, Sight

  Jacques Lusseyran (2014). “And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II”, p.18, New World Library

  17 Copy quote

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