The Roots of Heaven Quotes

“... Някой ден със сигурност ще се продават хапчета за човечност. И човек ще взема сутрин по едно на гладно, преди да се срещне с другите.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“...хуморът е безшумен и благовъзпитан динамит, който ви позволява да взривите настоящото си положение винаги щом ви дойде до гуша, но извънредно дискретно и без последствия.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Е, добре, накрая ми хрумна една идея. Когато вече не издържате, правете като мен: мислете си за свободните слонове, препускащи през Африка, за стотиците и стотици прекрасни животни, на които нищо не може да се опре - нито една стена, нито една ограда от бодлива тел, - които преминават огромни открити пространства и трошат всичко по пътя си, и събарят всичко - докато са живи, нищо не е в състояние да ги спре - каква свобода, а! И дори когато вече не са живи, знае ли човек, продължават навярно да препускат другаде все така свободно. Така че, започне ли да ви измъчва клаустрофобията, бодливата тел, железобетонът, пълният материализъм, представете си стада слонове на свобода, проследете ги с поглед, не се откъсвайте от тях, от техния бяг и ще видите, веднага ще ви стане по-добре...”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Islam calls that 'the roots of heaven' and to the Mexican Indians it is the 'tree of life'--the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. [...] Our needs--for justice, for freedom and dignity--are roots of heaven that are deeply embedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots...”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“... I don’t like people who mistake their private neurosis for a philosophical outlook.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“...but just remember that men have never had more need of company than they have today. That fellow Morel said it straight out, in his famous petition. We need all the dogs, all the cats, and all the birds, and all the elephants we can find...”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“من در بوته زار تنها و بدون خاطره زندگی می کنم و بازگشت به جنگل برای مدت نه ماه، با تصویر دختری چون او در چشم ها، چیز بسیار بدی است. چندان می خراشد و می خراشد تا این حس را القا کند که زندگی را انتخاب نکرده ایم بلکه آن را از دست داده ایم.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“ فهم مطلب آسان است : آنچه به چشم خود دیده اند از حد و اندازه بیرون بوده است. در نتیجه مردم طوری احساس تنهایی و بی کسی می کنند که به چیزی نیرومند نیاز دارند چیزی که واقعا بتوانند ضربه گیر باشد. زمان سگ ها گذشته است، انسان ها به فیل ها محتاجند. من مسائل را اینطور می بینم". صفحه ی 154”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“. . . distance and imagination which is almost always indispensable to the birth of legends.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Humor is a silent and polite dynamite which enables you to blow your own way of life sky-high every time you have had enough of it, yet with the maximum discretion and without making a mess.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“This was what he stood for: a world where there would be room enough even for such a mass of clumsy and cumbersome freedom. A margin of humanity, of tolerance, where some of life’s beauty could take refuge. His eyes narrowed a little, and an ironic, bitter smile came to his lips. I know you all, he thought. Today you say that elephants are archaic and cumbersome, that they interfere with roads and
telegraph poles, and tomorrow you’ll begin to say that human rights too are obsolete and cumbersome, that they interfere with progress, and the temptation will be so great to let them fall by the road and not to burden ourselves with that
extra load. And in the end man himself will become in your eyes a clumsy luxury, an archaic survival from the past, and you’ll dispense with him too, and the only thing left will be total efficiency and universal slavery and man himself will disappear under the weight of his material achievement. He had learned that much behind the barbed wire of the forced labor camp: it was our education, a lesson be was not prepared to forget.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“She must have said to herself that one can always rely on a gentleman when it’s a question of not understanding a woman.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“You’re right. One has to be mad. [...] Do you remember about the prehistoric reptile, the an- cestor of man, the first to emerge from the mud in early Paleozoic times, a milliard years ago, who set out to live in the air and to breathe, even though he had no lungs? [...] Well, he was mad too. Absolutely bats. That’s why he tried. He’s the ancestor of us all, and we shouldn’t forget it. But for him we wouldn’t be here. He was as crazy as they come. We too have got to try. That's what progress is. By trying like him, perhaps we’ll wind up with the necessary organs, the organ of dignity, of decency, or of fraternity.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Never say die. You have to be mad, it’s true, to keep going and hope, but the first reptile who dragged his belly out of the water a million years ago to live on land without lungs and tried to breathe all the same — he too was mad. In the end the reptile became a man. We must always try to do the best we can — perhaps one day well become human, who knows.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“They died... Have you ever seen a baby elephant lying on its side, with its trunk inert, gazing at you with eyes in which there seem to have taken refuge all those so highly praised human qualities of which humanity is so largely devoid?”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“You see, deep in their hearts they’re convinced that a colonization that doesn't end in a seditious movement and massacres is not a successful colonization. Perhaps they’re right, in a way.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Islam calls that ’the roots of heaven.’ and to the Mexican Indians it is the 'tree of life' — the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. A need for protection and company, from which obstinate people like Morel try to escape by means of petitions, fighting committees, by trying to take the protection of species in their own hands. Our needs for justice, for freedom and dignity— are roots of heaven that are deeply embedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots ...”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“On the whole, people are beginning to understand. Any fellow who's known war, fear, who thinks of his children and of the hydrogen tests, and of political oppression, is beginning to understand that the protection of nature concerns him directly. . .”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“She would bring him back to us as docile as a sheep. ‘Women,’ I concluded rather bitterly, ‘have at their command certain means of persuasion which the best- organized police forces do not possess.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“I am very old,’ he said gravely. He added, as a matter of course: ‘I’m glad to die in Africa.’
'And why?'
'Because this is where mankind began. The cradle of humanity is in Nyasaland. It’s been pretty well proved.’
'Odd reason.’
'One dies better at home.'
'Yet another one, I thought, who’s trying to find a home on earth.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“The obstinacy of those people is funny. That someone may simply be fed up with them and their ways and may want to look for another company, that just cannot enter their heads. They can’t believe it. There must be a trick behind it, a dishonest trick, something crooked, something political, something they can understand. They’re so used to sniffing at their own behinds that when someone wants to get a breath of fresh air, to turn at last to something different, and more important, and threatened, something that's got to be
saved at all costs, it's quite beyond them.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“It was obviously a typical human enterprise, very much of this earth, with nothing true or sincere about it, and doomed irremediably to the usual exploitations and treachery...”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“I had made it my chief aim in Africa to hinder the spreading of our poisons — of our absurd political notions of democracy, self-government, parliamentary institutions, political parties, and all that threatened the African way of life and the traditions of the African tribes. I was here to watch over a pastoral civilization, to prevent it from going our way, and I was ready to do anything to carry out my self-appointed task.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“After all, Father, to understand their demonstration one doesn't have to be very intelligent: it's enough to have suffered.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“That night I hardly slept a wink, but turned over and over in my tent; never until then had I felt so alone or so deserted. Perhaps even the elephants are too small, I thought, as I stared into the darkness, and we need a far bigger and more affectionate presence at our side.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“But, my dear child,' I stammered, I don’t see how the desire to preserve the African fauna . . She broke in on me: ‘Oh, to hell with the African fauna! Can’t you see what the real question is? The question is simply whether you have confidence in yourselves, in your good sense, in your reason, in your ability to prevail, yes, to prevail. Out there in the bush is a man who believes in you, a man who believes you’re capable of kindness, of generosity, of ... of a ... of a great love, in which there’d be room even for herds of elephants, and . . . and even for the most wretched dog alive!”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“I aimed as well as I could.'
'So as not to kill?'
''You never teach a man anything by killing him. On the contrary, you make him forget everything.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“To the people, Morel was the hero of a cause that had nothing to do with nations and political ideologies, a cause that had nothing to do with Africa and touched what was deepest in them — a secret rancor — a confused dream of being able one day to emerge victorious from the difficulty of being a man. They were staking a claim to respectful and decent treatment.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“...misanthropy, hatred of mankind, is the order of the day.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“It wasn't true, the evidence was faked, but the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings
or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us. Whether the Communists staged a diabolical lie or the Americans sowed plague in China, the one thing that matters is that, as a man, you're
in the gutter. Colonel Babcock. [...] Maybe the West is a civilization, but the Communists are an ugly truth about man. Don't accuse them of inhuman methods: everything about them is human. We're all one great, lovely zoological family, and we shouldn't forget it. That's how you came to be in the gutter Colonel and it's no use your taking refuge on an island and behaving like an ostrich — being English, I mean; the gutter is there, it's you, or rather in you; it flows in your veins.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven