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| | ==English text== | | ==English text== |
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| − | History and philosophy have eternal duties, which are, at the same time, simple duties; to combat Caiphas the High-priest, Draco the Lawgiver, Trimalcion the Legislator, Tiberius the Emperor; this is clear, direct, and limpid, and offers no obscurity.
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| − | But the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its abuses, insists on being stated and taken into account. Cenobitism is a human problem.
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| − | When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence, of aberration but of good-will, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no.
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| − | A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto, sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme abnegation.
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| − | To abdicate with the object of reigning seems to be the device of monasticism.
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| − | In the cloister, one suffers in order to enjoy. One draws a bill of exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light. In the cloister, hell is accepted in advance as a post obit on paradise.
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| − | The taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide paid for with eternity.
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| − | It does not seem to us, that on such a subject mockery is permissible. All about it is serious, the good as well as the bad.
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| − | The just man frowns, but never smiles with a malicious sneer. We understand wrath, but not malice.
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| | ==Translation notes== | | ==Translation notes== |
