Pensées of Mauritian aphorist Malcolm de Chazal:
- Birdsong is always in pitch. Birds sound wrong only when frightened.
- The underbrush makes the light chubby.
- A trotting dog: his hind legs knit and his forelegs crochet.
- Night softens the mind’s irritations and inflames the body’s.
- The mouth and eyes are each anagrams of the other.
- An animal’s feet are as intelligent as a man’s hands.
- Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
- A cat purrs himself to sleep, being the only creature who sings his own lullaby.
- Shadows round everything out. The lacework of light is based on a circular pattern.
- Good taste has no fixed rules, though fashion has. Taste amounts to being fashionable with a sense of style.
- The eyes of the overly fearful stammer.
- Servants eventually come to resemble their masters. “Professional” churchgoers end up looking like priests.
- Suffering doesn’t ennoble unless there is greatness to begin with.
And “Number is the alphabet of form, which is why children always want to touch whatever they count.”
