My Night at Maud's Quotes

Jean-Louis I shock you, I know. I've had affairs with girls I loved and thought of marrying. But I've never just slept with a girl; that simply doesn't appeal to me.

Vidal Yes, but let's suppose you met a lovely girl you knew you'd never see again. There are circumstances in which it's difficult to resist.

Jean-Louis Fate, I won't say God, has kept me from such circumstances. I was never lucky with brief encounters. Remarkably unlucky.

Vidal Just in that respect I have been lucky. Once in Italy with a Swedish girl. In Poland with an English girl. Those two nights are perhaps the happiest of my life. I'm all for affairs on journeys or at conferences. At least they avoid the clinging, bourgeois element.

Jean-Louis In principle, I'm against. But since such a thing never happened to me...

Jean-Louis Although it's less enforced now, one thing I dislike about the Church is balancing sins against good deeds. Purity of heart is more important.

Jean-Louis I'm happy around you. If I'm happy with you, it's because we'll never meet again. The thought of the future needn't depress us, since we have none.

Maud Your lips are cold.

Jean-Louis So are yours. They're nice.

Maud Cold, like your feelings.

Jean-Louis Mathematics distract from God. A useless, intellectual diversion - worse than other diversions.

Maud Why worse?

Jean-Louis Because its completely abstract and thus inhuman.

Jean-Louis Are you still a Marxist?

Vidal Absolutely. For a Communist, ] is very relevant today. Personally, I very much doubt that history has any meaning. Yet I wager that it has, so I'm in a Pascalian situation. Hypothesis A: Society and politics are meaningless. Hypothesis B: History has meaning. I'm not at all sure B is more likely to be true than A. More likely the reverse. Let's even suppose B has a 10% chance of being true and A has 90%. Nevertheless I have no choice but to opt for B, because only the hypothesis that history has meaning allows me to go on living. Suppose I bet on A, and B was true, despite the lesser odds. I'd have thrown away my life. So I must choose B to justify my life and actions. There's an 90% chance I'm wrong but that doesn't matter.

Jean-Louis Mathematical hope. Potential gain divided by probability. With your hypothesis B, though the probability is slight, the possible gain is infinite. In your case, a meaning to life. In Pascal's, eternal salvation.

Vidal It was ], ] or maybe ] who said about the ] that the situation forced them to choose the one chance in a thousand. Because hope became infinitely greater if you took that chance than if you didn't take it.

Maud What I don't like about you is that you always dodge the issue. You don't face up to things. A shamefaced Christian combined with a shamefaced ].

Jean-Louis You come here a lot?

Vidal Almost never. And you?

Jean-Louis I've never set foot in here before.

Vidal And yet our paths cross right here. How strange.

Jean-Louis On the contrary. Our ordinary paths never cross. Therefore, the point of intersection must be outside those ordinary paths. I've been dabbling in mathematics in my spare time. It would be fun to calculate our chances of meeting in a two-month period.

Vidal Can it be done?

Jean-Louis It's a matter of data and how you handle it. Provided the data exists. Obviously, if I don't know where a person lives or works I can't work out the odds of running into them.

Jean-Louis As a Christian I say it's evil not to acknowledge what is good.

Jean-Louis Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking. That sounds...

Maud A little vulgar.

Jean-Louis Yes. It would be silly to generalize about particular cases but each girl revealed a new moral problem which I had never faced up to before. It would be good for me to be shaken out of my moral lethargy.

Maud You could have ignored the physical aspect for the moral.

Jean-Louis Yes, but, the moral aspect would never have arisen if - Well, I know it's never impossible but the physical and moral are inseparable, let's face it.

Maud Perhaps it was the trick of the devil?

Jean-Louis Then I was caught. Yes, in a way, I was caught.

Maud Don't you want to be a saint?

Jean-Louis Not at all.

Maud You do shock me.

Jean-Louis So you've said.

Maud You're the most outrageous person I've met. Religion has always left me cold. I'm neither for nor against it. But people like you prevent me from taking it seriously. All that really concerns you is your respectability. Staying in a woman's room after midnight is dreadful. It would never occur to you to stay because I'm lonely. To establish a slightly less conventional relationship even if we should never meet again. This I find stupid - very stupid and not very Christian.

Jean-Louis It's nothing to do with religion. I just thought you might be tired.

Maud Do you still think so?

Jean-Louis Religion adds to love, but love adds to religion, also.

Françoise I don't believe in predestination. I believe we are always free to choose even if God aids us in our choice.

Jean-Louis There can't be real love unless it's shared. That's why I believe in a certain predestination.

Jean-Louis Ideally, one should never have to leave people. One shouldn't have to forget people. There should be one love, no other - not even platonic.

Maud Especially not platonic.

Maud Don't be childish. Lie beside me. Outside, or inside - if I'm not too repulsive.

Jean-Louis I'll take the armchair.

Maud You'll get a cramp. Are you afraid? Of yourself? Of me? I swear I won't touch you, and you I thought you had self-control.

Maud Do you really want my life story? Well, I had a lover and my husband had a mistress. Curiously enough, she was rather your sort: very moral, very Catholic. Not hypocritical, not calculating - very sincere. Yet I hated her like poison.

Jean-Louis My Christianity and my affairs are different, conflicting matters.

Vidal Yet they co-exist in you.

Jean-Louis In a warlike fashion. Now I may shock you once again but pursuing girls does not estrange one from God any more than pursing mathematics, for example.

Vidal She's - very beautiful.

Jean-Louis Marry her.

Vidal No, we've gone into all that. We don't get on with each other, day in, day out. But we're the best of friends. I asked you to come because otherwise I know she and I will make love.

Jean-Louis I won't come.

Vidal But we would only do it to pass the time and that's no solution, for her or me. I'm a puritan, as you know.

Jean-Louis More than me?

Vidal Much more.

Maud What I have against you is your lack of spontaneity.

Jean-Louis I open my heart to you. What more do you want?

Maud I don't like your love with conditions attached.