Futility

They flock together like ants, hurry east and west, run north and south. Some are mighty, some humble. Some aged, some young. They have places to go, houses to return to. At night they sleep, in the morning get up.

There is no more love.  There is no more glory.  A thick night covers the earth.  And we shall be dead before the dawn.

... no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.

“… when you think about it, there’s no good reason to do anything.”

There is no point.

Just as I dress and go out to visit the professor and exchange a few more or less insincere compliments with him, without really wanting to at all, so it is with the majority of men day by day and hour by hour in their daily lives and affairs.

Ah, look where I might and think what I might, there was no cause for rejoicing and nothing beckoned me. There was nothing to charm me or tempt me. Everything was old, withered, grey, limp and spent, and stank of staleness and decay.

I always say that if you wanted to think the worst of a man, better not see him close to, because when you watch him getting stuck a little deeper you think it’s all just hopeless and in the end there’s no difference between drinking a cup of café

Jacques was talking, Mathieu looked at him, it was all so tedious, the bureau in the half-light, the snatches of band-music from beyond the pines, the curls of butter in the little dish, the empty bowls on the tray: so futile an eternity.