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Jean d'Ormesson: his most beautiful maxims of life

2022-12-05T13:02:56.927Z


Five years after the death of the famous academician, Le Figaro invites you to (re)discover his most beautiful quotes.


On December 5, 2017, Jean d'Ormesson left us, a few hours before Johnny Halliday.

The former director of

Le Figaro

, a prolific writer (

La Gloire de l'Empire, Au plaisir de Dieu, Garçon de quoi crire

..., published by Gallimard) was elected to the Académie Française in 1973. Appreciated for his humour, his great culture, his art of conversation, he was recognized by all as one of the greatest ambassadors of French literature and spirit.

To discover

  • Crosswords, arrow words, 7 Letters... Free to play anywhere, anytime with the Le Figaro Games app

Read alsoThe unpublished correspondence of Jean d'Ormesson

He embodied for some, who had read it on the diagonal, a somewhat easy bourgeois optimism, with a somewhat too polite melancholy, he who had received much and been much celebrated.

Highly publicized, regularly invited to television shows, he was nevertheless wary of honors.

Or rather, he

“despised”

them , while confiding with humor

“not necessarily hating what I despise”

.

His work reveals a serious and clairvoyant reflection on the passage of time, and the erosion of human things.

Anthology.

● "It's when there is something above life that life becomes beautiful"

The academician believed in a "

transcendence that we have the right and habit to call God

", as he confided in the

Guide des Égarés

(Gallimard, 2016).

Transcendence, etymologically "

surpassing

", is recognizing that one's own existence does not derive its cause from itself.

And that therefore, another entity surpasses it, be it God or another absolute.

● “Culture is space and time made sensitive to the heart”

Far from making it the prerogative of a certain academic elite, of formal theories or dusty books, the writer made culture a much broader subject.

Culture is everything that binds people together and gives them a taste for life: it is

“close to a way of being, to love at first sight, to an ever-unfinished celebration of happiness.

(The living culture, 2008)

.

● "But it's amazing!"

So exclaimed the writer in 2013 when the rumors about his state of health were not good.

Even at the most serious hours, Jean d'Ormesson kept repeating this phrase

"as a form of politeness, a snub to the prowling death"

.

“This death that he seems to want to keep at a distance with such energy, such a love of life that they are almost suspicious of it

,” said journalist Anne Fulda in a portrait of

Figaro

at the death of the latter.

● “Thank you for the roses, thank you for the thorns.

Life is not a perpetual party”

Could Jean d'Ormesson have guessed that the recording of this sentence would become in 2022 one of the most fashionable sounds of the "

reals

" of Instagram and Tiktok?

Here is the continuation

: "And if you speak of tears, you must not forget the roses and if you speak of roses, you must not forget the tears".

The

"party in tears",

here is the most beautiful definition of life given by Jean d'Ormesson in

C'tait bien

(Gallimard, 2003), both a

"suffering"

and a

"miracle",

the only oxymoron that allows us to find the happy medium between

"two symmetrical and disastrous temptations, angelism and despair".

● “Don't seek to be wise at all costs.

Madness is also wisdom.

And wisdom, madness”

In

It was good

, the writer advises his readers very freely: “

Cry when you have to.

Laugh.

I laughed a lot.

I laughed at the world and at others and at myself.

Nothing is very important.

Everything is tragic.

Everything we love will die.

And I will die too.

Life is beautiful

.”

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-12-05

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