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Rene Daumal Biography

René Daumal (French: [domal]; 16 March 1908 – 21 May 1944) was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet, best known for his posthumously published novel Mount Analogue (1952) as well as for being an early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics.

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Rene Daumal Quotes

Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.

Clearest, Degree, Degrees, Pain, Tears

. . . the most serious thing, and the strangest, is that we are afraid to the point of panic, not so much of seeing ourselves as of being seen by ourselves. This is our root absurdity. What is behind this great fear?

Afraid, Panic, Point, Roots, Serious Things, Thing

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

Art, Descends, Learning, Memories, Saw, Sees

It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content. . . it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.

Confusion, Descend, Enough, Goal, Writing

A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.

Blades, Errors, False, Impaled, Knives, True

Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.

Drinking, Men, Philosophy, Teaches

Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.

Although, Animal, Devours, Eat, Men, Thinking

Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.

Autism, Change, Experience, Funds, Gold, Shared

In the mythic tradition, the Mountain is the bond between Earth and Sky. Its solitary summit reaches the sphere of eternity, and its base spreads out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the way by which man can raise himself to the divine and by which the divine can reveal itself to man.

Manifold, Men, Mountain, Mythic, Sky, Spreads

I am dead because I have no desire, I have no desire because I think I possess, I think I possess because I do not try to give; Trying to give, we see that we have nothing; Seeing that we have nothing, we try to give ourselves, Trying to give ourselves, we see that we are nothing, Seeing that we are nothing, we desire to become, Desiring to become, we live.

Desire, Desiring, Giving, Nothing, Thinking

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Art, Double, Illusion, Science, Truth

When feet doesn't want to hold you, you climb with your head. Maybe it isn't the natural order of things, but isn't it better to walk with your head than to think with your feet, as it happens so frequently?

Climbing, Happens, Hold, Order, Things, Thinking

The door to the invisible must be visible.

Door, Doors, Invisible, Visible

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Appears, Dawn, Inspirational, Morning, Nature, Time

Definition: Alpinism is the art of going through the mountains confronting the greatest dangers with the biggest of cares. What we call art here, is the application of a knowledge to an action.

Action, Art, Cares, Climbing, Confronting, Mountain

Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.

Cutting, Down, Errors, Grains, Men, Turn