Many people claim coffee
inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring
people even more boring.
-- Honore de Balzac "Treatise on Modern Stimulants"
(The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee)
translated from the French by Robert Onopa
From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas
quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its
legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in,
bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a
magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering
wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and
fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with
ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black
water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.
-- Honore de Balzac "Treatise on Modern Stimulants"
(The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee)
translated from the French by Robert Onopa