[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

"Man's misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay
in the room where he belongs. Pascal said that. And Pascal was a
great man, a Frangipani of the intellect, a real craftsman, so to
speak, and no one wants one of those anymore. People read incendiary
books now by huguenots or englishmen. Or they write tracts or so-
called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in
question. Nothing is supposed to be right anymore, suddenly
everything ought to be different. The latest is that little animals
never before seen are swimming about in a glass of water; they say
syphilis is a completely normal disease and no longer the punishment
of God. God didn't make the world in seven days, it's said, but over
millions of years, if it was He at all. Savages are human beings
like us; we raise our children wrong; and the earth is no longer
round like it was, but flat at the top and bottom like a melon- as if
it made a damn bit of difference! in every field people question and
bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments. It's no
longer enough for a man to say that something is so or how it is so-
everything has to be proven besides, preferably with witnesses and
numbers and one or another of these ridiculous experiments. These
Diderots and d'Alemberts and Voltaies and Rousseaus or whatever names
these scribblers have- there are ven clerics among them and gentlemen
of noble birth!-


they've finally managed to infect the whole society with their
perfidious fidgets, with their sheer delight in discontent and their
unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world, in short,
with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!"