Romain Rolland - Jean-Christophe (1904)

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A hero is the one who does what he can. The others don't.

Romain Rolland
You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero!... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.

Romain Rolland
It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.

Romain Rolland
To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

Romain Rolland
"There are some dead who are more alive than the living."
"No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some who are more dead than the dead."
"Maybe. In any case there are old things which are still young."
"Then if they are still young we can find them for ourselves.... But I don't believe it. What has been good once never is good again."

Romain Rolland
It is not peace that I seek, but life.

Romain Rolland
If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

Romain Rolland
All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities

Romain Rolland
"Thou art come back to me, Thou art come back to me! O Thou, whom I had lost!... Why didst Thou abandon me?"
"To fulfil My task, that thou didst abandon."
"What task?"
"My fight."
"What need hast Thou to fight? Art Thou not master of all?"
"I am not the master."
"Art Thou not All that Is?"
"I am not all that is. I am Life fighting Nothingness. I am not Nothingness, I am the Fire which burns in the Night. I am not the Night. I am the eternal Light; I am not an eternal destiny soaring above the fight. I am free Will which struggles eternally. Struggle and burn with Me."

Romain Rolland
The artist is the compass which, through the raging of the storm, points steadily to the north.

Romain Rolland