In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.
A politician is forced to make a habit of noble phrases and optimistic lies. In the end they infect himself.
Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present.
In Europe, war is a disease which has been in the family for generations: no one is surprised when it makes another leap. Even the patient only attends to it with part of his mind.
No one asks public men to be strictly moral, but they must seem to be well-behaved.
If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.