Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a desire to avoid confronting one's thoughts and the chaos they may bring.
Emile Zola's quote suggests that sometimes it is better to avoid introspection and the potential turmoil that can arise from examining our thoughts. The act of blowing out the candle symbolizes a desire to remain in the dark rather than face the illuminated complexities and harsh realities of one's own mind.
In practice
During a meditation retreat, someone might use this quote to explain the struggle with their inner thoughts.
I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.
A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.
Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!
Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.
There are two things that are suited to humble the souls of men, and they are, first, a due consideration of God, and then of themselves - of God, in His greatness, glory, holiness, power, majesty, and authority; of ourselves, in our mean, abject, and sinful condition.
You don't need organized religion to connect with the universe. Often a church is the only place you can go to find peace and quiet... But it shouldn't be confused with connecting with one's spirit.
The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?
I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do β mostly with my time.
One of the curious things about censorship is that no one seems to believe in it for himself. We want censorship to protect someone elseβ the young, the unstable, the suggestible, the stupid. I have never heard of anyone who wanted a film or speaker banned because otherwise he himself might be harmed.
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