Gustave Flaubert Quote

Open them, weak yet proud man, pitiful ant that struggles to crawl over itsspeck of dust! You declare yourself free and great, and for all the wretchedness ofyour life you hold yourself in high esteem, celebrating – no doubt in a spirit ofderision – your rotten and transient flesh. And then you imagine that this beautifullife, lived out between a little pride that you call greatness, and that base selfinterestwhich is at the heart of your society, will be rewarded by some form ofimmortality. Immortality for you – more lascivious than the monkey, more evilthan the tiger, more crawling than the serpent? Come on! Show me a paradise forthe monkey, the tiger, the snake, a paradise of lust, of cruelty and baseness, aparadise of selfishness – eternity for this dust, immortality for this nothingness.You boast of being free and of being able to do what you call good and evil?Doubtless so that you can be denounced more rapidly, for what good can youpossibly do? Is a single one of your gestures produced by anything other thanpride or self-interest?