Quotes by Jacques Rivière

“There is no absolute peril except for him who abandons himself; There is no complete death except for him who aquires a taste of dying.””

“As long as you allow your intellectual force to pour out into the absolute, it moves in eddies, its power is dissipated, it is exposed to predatory blasts that disorganize it; but as soon as it is brought back by anxiety to your own mind and you direct it to the enigmatic object close at hand, it condenses, intensifies, becomes useful and penetrating, and brings you positive treasures, to wit, truths that are expressed with all the relief that can make them communicable, accessible to others, hence something which transcends your suffering, your very existence, which broadens and consolidates you, which gives you the only reality that man can reasonably hope to conquer by his own powers, reality in others.””

“In a book published in 1664, the Governor of Trois-Rivières Pierre Boucher wrote: “People travel over the snow using a type of shoe made by the Savages known as ‘raquettes’ or snowshoes, and they are very helpful.” Canoes also become necessary for navigating the rivers and lakes. The coureurs de bois could never have developed the fur trade without using canoes and snowshoes.””