Quotes in English
477 quotes available in this translation
Eyes on the ground Soul looking towards the sky Guidance for my sons
"My dear sons! I have written these notes for you. When you were little, I thought to give you a guiding hand in the notes; now that you are grown, I think that the notes will strengthen you in judgment and wisdom. My childhood was only under supervision until I was 11, and then I always had to burn my finger first when I needed to be taught. Even adults are often hesitant and perplexed by certain questions in life, so how about young people? If death should overtake me, you will find in these notes my admonishing, watchful, thoughtful soul."
Company
"Anyone who wants company is in spiritual need. A barrel that can no longer be filled with its own wine."
Company
"The child cannot exist without company. The Gypsies and all uneducated people wander around in company. The peasant goes out of the gate on Sunday as soon as he is dressed. He looks for someone to talk to. The great of mankind liked to live in privacy. A French writer said: - "I am honored when someone visits me, but everyone is pleasing me when he doesn't. This suggests that company is not exactly a necessary condition of life. The physically weak feel protected in company, the mentally weak thus seek to trigger their thoughts. To be forever in company is as foolish as to live forever alone. But in any case, if you have to choose between the two excesses, it is more pleasant and useful to do the latter."
Company
"Avoid: He who wears a false gold chain, a jewel of glass. Whose every word is honey. He that immediately blackens, whom you praise. Who says: - There is no God! Who spends more than he is worth."
Company
"Beware of a man whose eyes are marked by the wrinkles of cunning. He is not a pure soul. Beware of a man who is fattening. He will make you pay for his words. Beware of a man who speaks of your faults as your assets. A mocker. Evil."
Company
"If necessity throws you into contact with a person who is not suited to you, you should immediately find urgent things to do to get rid of him/her, and if not, be patient and silent as long as necessity clamps you to him/her. When choosing your entourage, don't look: Who is poor? Who is rich? Who is short? Who is tall? Just look at: Is his collar clean? By clean I don't mean just the clothes."
Company
"The company of educated women is most pleasant. Their thinking is flitting, rambling. They are always trying to keep away from animalism (for the evolution of female dress is nothing but a striving for the idealization of the human body.) They have much delicacy and tenderness, and also pure, unselfish love."
Company
"Pleasant is the one who creates pleasant images in our minds. Hence the complaining man is dull and unpleasant. He evokes a group of bad images in our minds. (Understand what I mean by images. Every word, or at least every thought, evokes images in us.)"
Company
"Never be deceived by a dignified face or a strong voice. A peacock is a dignified animal, but it has no more intelligence than a hen. The lion can roar, but he is a beast like any other beast."
Company
"You will find that some ethnic groups live a more physical life than we do. Such as some of the Jews, Italians and Gypsies in our circle of contact. Naturally there are exceptions, but most of them soon turn their conversation to the field of breeding, to animal life, because this life is theirs, and therefore their thoughts revolve around it."
Company
"Painters and musicians are mostly nice people and superficial thinkers. They move around a lot in the world and so have a lot of life experience, but they are not good at talking about deep subjects because they read very little and so their knowledge is more an accumulation of individual experience than the intellectual store of humanity. If you come into contact with a painter or musician whose company is not pleasant, they are the easiest to get rid of. One has only to praise the work of a competitor before them."
Conversation
"Many times I've seen people sitting or standing at social gatherings, not paying attention to anyone, and no one paying attention to them. You must not do that. The minute you are not having fun, nor is anyone else having fun with you, you no longer have the right to stay there."
Conversation
"You often hear it, or say it yourself: - I don't know how to express myself. I feel as if they were saying: - I have many pearls at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, - but I can't bring them up."
Conversation
"We must behave towards our fellow human beings as if Christ's second commandment were. written in our hearts: - Love your neighbor more than yourself."
Conversation
"Every thought is a brain excitement. The human brain is a storehouse of such excitement. These excitements are arranged in the same way as the pipes of an organ are arranged in a row by the pipe organ builder. When you talk, you touch one of the pipes in the person you are talking to. You can talk to the miner about anything, he'll talk to you about shafting. The farmer will talk about agriculture. The tenor singer about the voice. The actor about the stage. What distinguishes the clever man from the unclever is that he does not play his own organ, but lets others play their own pipes. If it's interesting, let's listen. If not, we run away."
Conversation
"An ugly thought is like an ugly child: no one looks at it with joy. Ugly ideas are the rubbish heap of man's spiritual household. Why revolve it?"
Conversation
"To behave wisely in company, just think about it: What is speech? And: Why does a man speak? Look at two women talking: you will often see that they are both talking. Neither of them is interested in what the other is saying, only in what she is saying? Why are they talking? On the contrary, look at two smart people talking: each one is careful: what is the other saying? He tries to listen as much as he can. Why are they talking? For them, the aim is to talk. For these, the matter of the speech."
Conversation
"In ordinary conversation, a man always talks about what excites his brain, or used to excite it. Hence it is that the man of average intelligence prefers to talk rather than to listen, the man of intellect is more eager to listen than to speak. Because the intelligent man does not find it necessary to state everything that excites his brain. He is buttoned up. He only appears openly and confidentially to his relatives."
Conversation
"If you observe the child and the woman, the peasant and the gypsy, in short, the people of little intellect, you will soon see that the axis of their speech is the Self. The Self is the bell ringer. Whoever approaches him/her, s/he tolls the bell for everyone. S/he tolls without a moment's thought, endlessly, until s/he realizes that s/he is not being listened to."
Conversation
"I knew a poor tailor. He lived such a miserable life that he never ate a hot meal. But he did have a coffeehouse meerschaum pipe, a sort of two-korona ordinary item. On Sundays he would stand outside the gate with it and pipe proudly. He thought nobody else in the world had one. And when asked in jest how much he would sell it for, he said seriously that no one in the village had enough money to match it. There are such pipes in the spiritual world. He who has little brags about it. He who has much hides it."
Conversation
"You can know a man by observing what excites him? The child is excited by this question: nutrition."
Conversation
"Sometimes it is inevitable that we will come into contact with people whose curiosity goes beyond common decency. It is no common pleasure to rebuke such intruders with silence. We remain silent. We don't even look at him, but with the calmest and most expressionless face possible. And we are silent, as if they were completely deaf. We are careful not to utter an offensive word. The imperfect man may be corrected, but not pricked. It is against the law of human kindness. Silence is sometimes eloquence."
Conversation
"Man is an angel in animal flesh. For our earthly life we are welded to an animal. This animal is our body. Avoid people who have more animal in them than angel. You know them by their speech. The more one has evolved from animalism, the less his thoughts are concerned with the animal life of man. You hear the speech of the peasant every day: it is full of the words of the carnal life. They are the most uneducated. In their world of thought there are more concepts of the animal than of the ideal. Only suffering and love sometimes open the angel's lips in them, and then you see that their garments are like those I wrote about in the Samaritan's dream about Methuselah."
Conversation
"The conversation of an educated man lacks man-talk, money, the animal things of man, boasting, hygiene, digestion, insults. Everyone strives to make his presence pleasant to the other."
Conversation
"A bad-tempered man poisons the air with his presence. Run from it. And from all places where bad-tempered people live. Why should we dwell on death row if we are not condemned."
Conversation
"Anyone who expresses views that are contrary to those of the rest of the company can be an interesting conversationalist. If he can prove and defend those views well, he gets the attention. It makes no difference whether he is right or wrong: it is either amusing or instructive."
Conversation
"There are many people who know this form of conversation and will talk against everything, even against their own convictions, just to make themselves look interesting. Of course, if they do it clumsily, they lose their value."
Conversation
"Never argue about God, the soul, immortality with anyone. He whose spirit is more developed than his body feels all these things anyway, and he whose spirit is less developed than his body, even Jesus Christ himself can speak to him, it cannot be proved to him/her."
Conversation
"Conversation sometimes turns into a fight. Some people are impatient with someone who doesn't share their opinion. They get angry, they shout. To such a man I say: - Please don't be angry that my opinion is different. I am not angry that yours is different. Let's talk about something else. Or: - You are shouting, so you are excited. An agitated person is emotional. You can't settle an intellectual issue with emotional arguments. And if the disputant is stupid, I remain silent and express my regret at having to leave as soon as possible."
Conversation
"If you can praise something, praise it without thinking, and praise it twice. If you have something to criticise, think seven times before you say it, and if you have to say it, hear it if you can. Because praise makes you feel good. Criticism causes pain. Nor are we attracted to the incision of the doctor that heals."
Conversation
"You cannot talk to an actor for five minutes without saying the word: Role."
Conversation
"People prefer to talk rather than listen. Listen, even if it is unpleasant. Speak only when you see that the other person does not like your silence."
Conversation
"When a smart man speaks, he always speaks for others. A fool always talks to himself even when he is talking to others."
Conversation
"When you thank something, let your words be richly gilded. When you express dissatisfaction, - if you can't use it for a cause or a man, speak only to yourself."
Conversation
"Thank you is a banknote without a number on it. It means a lot to some, a little to others, but everyone is happy to accept it."
Conversation
"Be as considerate and gentle towards men as if they were women. Be as simple towards women as if they were men."
Conversation
"Life wisdom: A foolish man is he who puts chains on his hands and feet. A promise is chain."
Conversation
"What a golden nut 'then'! How it will be worn out by the time it's now. But some invisible angel will soon give man - the eternal child - another and another gilded nut."
Conversation
"Never argue deeply with anyone. There are many crooked trees in the forest. It is a foolish enterprise to straighten the crooked trees. What I do is to make an enlightening comment on a half-formed opinion. If it doesn't work, that's his business, not mine."
Conversation
"Don't even be discouraged by a blowhard's jokes. Among the merchants there are many cunning and clever, yet there are few who can distinguish between life and fortune. To him wealth is life. They see every day that death takes a man out of his wealth, and it is certain that no merchant remains in his wealth, but he lives for his wealth."
Conversation
"When a subject comes up that makes us uneasy, let us remember that the unspoken word is ours, the spoken word never belongs to us again."
Conversation
"Never talk back with a live word. It hurts everyone to say that their views are wrong, because this also makes them look weak-minded. But if it annoys us that another's view is different, and sometimes glaringly lame, let us regard the moment and the man as an unpleasantness thrown in our way. Let's raise the umbrella and move on as soon as we can."
Conversation
"Every person has two sides: one white, one black. Never tell anyone about anyone's black side."
Visiting
"Do not visit a writer, a soldier, an actor in the morning. A canon in the afternoon. A journalist in the evening. A priest on Saturday. A farmer at harvest time. Painter while the sun lasts."
Visiting
"If we are guests, we should only be guests for as long as we are absolutely sure we are being nice to the host. We should eat only so much as not to starve and not to displease the host by refusing. Drink only so much as a sober man is used to. And if a guest come to us who is worthy of our welcome, we shall always bear him with our attentions in abundance."
Visiting
"Staying somewhere for more than an hour is no longer a visit, it's camping."
Courtesy
"What is politeness? The human-animal behaviour of a human-angel. Blindness to mistakes. A magnifying glass to merits. Candy wrapped in words. Gold smoke on copper face. Detail shop titled "To Kindness" and inscribed as such: Fast service for free. Of course, most people give away fake treasure. If you are ignorant and gullible, you take it home with you, as if you had brought home gold on witches' night, and woke up in the morning to find it was something that used to be lying behind horses on the highway."
Courtesy
"Be polite even to cats who think it's man's duty to always let them have the better seat and better milk. And even if you give them the only room in the rain, somehow don't expect them to give you at least an umbrella. Instead of grumbling, be happy. Think: - Life has given me an opportunity to try my patience. As much as I can remain calm, so much my wisdom has spread."
Courtesy
"Correspondent. Paper is a bad heat conductor. That's why we have to put artificial heat in it. For this purpose, the Chinese language of politeness was invented."
Humility
"Morals are taught in school, but not explained. Humility is another morality that is easily misunderstood. In our circumstances, humility does not mean putting your neck at anyone's feet. They'd soon step on it! Your humility should only manifest itself in human kindness. Don't look down on anyone, don't crow in anyone's eyes. All men have an equal right to walk on the earth, to breathe the air, to call God our father. See no cheap clothes on anyone. For clothes are not the man. And speak to no man with the voice of a sergeant to a soldier. Nor let yourselves be spoken to in that tone. If the situation is such that you cannot help it, shout three times within yourselves: - Donkey! Donkey! Donkey!"
Humility
"This is the way to know the weak-minded man: He does not discriminate between those who bow to their honour and those who bow to their purse. The merchant can foist on him what he does not want to buy. He cannot get rid of the woman who torments him. He leaves his child to his will. He never thinks he will die. He takes praise as cash. He walks in tight shoes. He's a waster. He's a man of his word: - I don't mind."
Humility
"If you are not arrogant, you are humble enough. Even biblical humility is only respect for people. Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, but he stood proud before Herod, and thought him not worthy to answer him."
Humility
"Life's struggles require a tough neck. If you slither through people like a worm, you'll always get stepped on."
Humility
"Talk to everyone as if you were equals - until you know whether you are higher or lower - in perfection. For, to be noble or excellence is only to impress the foolish and the pocket-centred."
Humility
"Curved-backed humility has always been an unpleasant sight for me. I felt there was something not-true and not-human about it."
Humility
"The notion of pomposity and humility is tucked away in the darkest place in the storeroom of our imagination. Most people confuse it with the concepts of pride and servility. The concept of Christian humility is far removed from the concept of lackeys. For Christ preached equality and did not want to bend necks below the line of equality, only to the line of the height of the body, whoever holds it above."
Humility
"Don't bow to anyone just because he is richer or wealthier, - leave the bowing to the servants and those who have servant souls. But bow to the man, however poor, however ragged, whose deeds you may bow to."
Humility
"Do not bow to a gold collar, nor to a majestic title, - only, - to an angelic heart."
Humility
"It is unfortunate that secondary school education develops little character other than the humble. Pious teachings pick the bones out of a man and turn him into a sissy. Such a person is worthless. I have never seen a submissive, bowing, hand rubbing person as righteous and valuable. He who appears before you with every word a spiritual genuflection, such a man is either deceitful or a spiritual cripple. Beware if you feel powerless before someone. In such a case you are either hungry or your mind is tired. In such cases, call upon the sacred Energy or feel the touch of my hand on your shoulders: - Stretch out your chest, my son, you are a man, not a dog!"
Greetings
"When you meet someone and suddenly you don't know whether to greet them or not? choose to greet."
Greetings
"If you meet someone you know for sure will say hello to you, say hello before they do, even if they're a beggar."
Greetings
"Greet the priest even if you don't know him. Any priest of any religion. All altars are holy. You honour religion with this greeting. And among priests, there are the most honest people."
Greetings
"We can also greet the great statesmen, artists and all those whom God has blessed as gifts to the nation. It is all right if our greetings are not returned. That is their business, not ours. I also tip my hat in the front of the worthy statue."
Greetings
"If doctors were wearing uniforms, I'd say, greet them as well. Doctors are the most useful workers in society. Especially appreciate those doctors who are spoken of with gratitude by the poor. With their hands God works."
Sensitivity
"Even the roughest man's skin feels the cold and the heat, the sting and the balm. The soul is just as sensitive to cold, warmth, prick and balm in the roughest man too. Even in the most abominable man the soul is not indifferent to touch. Especially the man of simple habits! It is interesting how sensitive a man is to his own name! The name is the electric bell that rings in the heart. When you greet someone, when you address him, always say his name, or his first name, or his surname, or his title. - Good afternoon Peter. - Thank you very much for your kind attention, sir. German uses the word please instead of name. It's a sign of tenderness. It's nice to see the French use of the dense Sil vu plé (if you like). French uses the word sir or madame in speech with a dense use of the word."
Sensitivity
"If you get angry, grieve and cry about something, in a month's time you won't be angry, grieving and crying about it in the same way. Well, in a year's time! Oh, what a wise man he would be who could look at everything with the eyes he sees in a year's time."
Sensitivity
"The man gets angry, gets enraged, if he is surrounded by a woman he doesn't like. A woman doesn't get angry about such things. Sometimes warmly, sometimes coldly, but she accepts every homage. Man's nature is will. The will always clashes. Woman's nature is love. Love always negotiates."
Book
"Put Buddha's teachings next to the Bible. (Die Reden Gotamo Buddha's Leipzig. W. Friedrich. Translator's name is Neumann.) This is not a cheap book: it costs the price of a cow. But I assure you it is worth more. And for this, get the books of all the founders of the religions. The founders of the religions were all spiritual men. Excellent spirits, either sent to us by Heaven or they themselves, out of love, undertook to incarnate. Each adapted his teachings to his own time and his own nation, but each made the greatest truths the core of his teachings. The basis of their doctrine is the same, but each expands the other. And where they differ, it is easy to see that it is because each speaks to a people of different minds and morals. But they are the most valuable people!"
Book
"The first novel we read is Robinson. The first philosophy is Büchner. Robinson sweet milk. Büchner is sweet poison. This poison has the same effect on the soul as the first pipe had on the body. Because only immature minds read it seriously, who cannot yet counter-think. Büchner says that there is no God, because we cannot see him, and because the Earth is not a paradise garden. His head is the lantern with which to light into the temple of Infinity. His hand is the power to pull God down from the centre of the universe. What a simpleton! If Buechner had been born a painter, he would certainly have painted the picture of God being dragged by men in chains to the guillotine."
Book
"If you were given an empty bookcase as a child, it would be interesting to note how many times and how the books would change by the time you were fifty? You would see a progression of intellectual development. I think that, not counting schoolbooks and technical books, the scale would show the following eight steps. I. Fairy tales, pulp fiction, illustrated bibles, all that is wonderful and dreamlike. II. Hunting adventures, horror novels, knightly tales, legends of chivalry, - the world of the glittering heroes. Of plays in which the leading part is played by a prima donna. A prima donna in hussar breeches or peasant trousers. Korpa III. IV. adventure novels. Sue, Dumas, Jókai, Verne, comic strips, world of dusty heroes. V. Romantic books. Jókai stays. Petőfi, Heine, Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare and some new poets. A world of flowers and moonlight. VI. Genuine journeys, history written in vernacular, biographies, poetic narratives; comedies, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Viktor Hugo (The Legend of the Ages). In between, naturalistic writers from Zola to Gorky. VII. Darwin, Häckel, Büchner, Schopenhauer, Moleschott, Spencer, tragedies from Shakespeare. VIII. Positivists. Hamlet from Shakespeare. Hamlet commentaries. Investigative history of Buckle. Teleology, theosophy, theology, theoretical spiritualism, biblical commentaries, occultism. Bible. Further on, also mainly spiritual readings. Well, it empties and fills the cabinet eight times. And from this sketchy list, can you judge where you are in your spiritual development? and where you're going next."
Book
"In the old tales, magicians conjure the spirit from a book. - Show yourself! Bring me the lamp of Aladdin. Take me here or take me there. Bring me treasure! It's not even a fairy tale anymore. You don't even need a magical science. Anyone can get books that have a spirit in them, and the spirit will appear at the first opening of the book; it will bring light; it will take us to beautiful worlds far away according to its power, or bring us treasures more precious than gold..."
Book
"The book is also a human body. Paper-body. The luminous part of the soul that lived on Earth remains in it. And the tears of its silent speech, its smile, - the beating of its heart."
Book
"The dead writers have left us like the fairy maiden in the fairy tale, fleeing from the shepherd who finds her: On the meadow the diamond-encrusted silk veil remains..."
Book
"It's a big deal to think that you can put the smartest, kindest hundred people in the world in your room. And they take up no more space than the length of a shotgun!"
Book
"Which one hundred writers should we choose to keep us company until death? Only travelling book agents have the answer ready. Some other people think that it is impossible to list a hundred such writers. Another writer is needed for the short man. Another for the tall man. Another for the woman. Different for the man. Another for the young. Different for the old. For the body at all times, at all ranks, one book is enough - the cookbook. But the soul develops till late old age, and goes up many steps. It is by his reading that any man may judge his progress. What a distance separates fairy tales from real stories! From interest in physical struggles! Our animal age from our spiritual age! The human soul is shed in books."
Book
"Nothing is cheaper than a book. Anyone who buys it in a bundle can see that. Out of ten books, there is always one that is worth the price of all ten. And another one that gives the price of the next ten books in advance."
Book
"You cannot suddenly put together a library. A book lover spends his whole life browsing and selecting. Library compiled to fit literature-history… Let us not forget that literary history is made by teachers! Teachers put the coal in the same order with the diamond, and the sparrow with the nightingale."
Book
"In biographies of great people, writers - well not writers, hog-nosed rooters - serve up outrageous indiscretions. The lowly devour these scribblings, because they are only interested in where this human phenomenon came from and how it became what it is. They look for causes in externalities, and think that under the same circumstances they could have become one. As if a hen could become an eagle, if by chance she were to hatch from her egg on the top of a cliff."
Book
"The spiritual evolution of our species has only taken place in the last century or so: In the time of Matthias Corvinus, tournaments were still fashionable. Ariosto sang the story of Roland, a man of terrible strength, at the same time. The celebrations of carnal men are also carnal. The carnival, the great drinking parties. The most glorious thing is muscular strength. Poets are ragged, butchers are pompous. No one is interested in the author of the Shakespeare dramas: is it director Shakespeare himself, or someone else writing in his name?"
Book
"Poveste. Învățați din ea! Privighetoarea a văzut odată un măgar care păștea liniștit la capătul parcelei. El a spus gânditor: - Mă doare să văd înapoierea. Știu că nu e vina lui, săracul, și Doamne ferește să-l disprețuiesc. Dar aș vrea să îl ajut. Cântecul este școala primordială a alfabetizării. Mă ofer să o cultiv. Măgarul a fost de acord. Lecția era pe cale să înceapă. Măgarul s-a întins la umbra copacului. Privighetoarea s-a cocoțat pe o creangă proeminentă și și-a cântat dulcea lecție, ciripind și cântând până i-a obosit gâtul. Apoi, uitându-se la măgar pentru a vedea efectul, a văzut că măgarul ațipise. Privighetoarea era tăcută. Măgarul nici măcar nu-și mișca urechile. Dar apoi, la capătul îndepărtat al parcelei, un alt măgar a vorbit: un răget strident, aspru și fără sens... Brusc, somnolența din ochii măgarului a dispărut. El și-a ridicat capul. A ascultat..."
Newspaper
"A journalist's work in education is like the first plow in an ancient fallow."
Newspaper
"For millions of people without books, the newspaper delivers new ideas every day. It is the newspaper that teaches them to read and write. It is the newspaper that moves the stationary man out of his infant stagnant thinking. Those newspaper beams that scatter the country at dawn are the first rays of spiritual light bound in sheaves. (...I thought so ten years ago, when the red people pleasers had no newspapers. - 1919.)"
Newspaper
"The cultural sections of newspapers are like pieces of broadcloths at the tailor's shop. The slice is usually made of a valuable single fabric, but that's just muster ohne wert (sample without value)."
Newspaper
"The only difference between a writer and a journalist is that a journalist dips his pen and thinks. A writer thinks first and then dips his pen."
Music
"The score is something like a pencil sketch of a painting of great beauty, and the interpreter has to recreate it from the sketch."
Music
"Music on Earth has a total of 7 octaves. There must be music in the other world. - How many octaves there? What is the infinity of sounds? What is only ten times seven octaves? Perhaps we can get an idea from the bass in the sky when we hear the thunder."
Music
"If you hear the clock strike at night and wonder what time it is, by the time you've read eleven or twelve, your sleep will be gone. Especially in Italy, where it's twenty-four o'clock! This waste of time could be avoided if the clock only struck four. We know approximately what time it is anyway. The four beats could be this: This would be repeated six times a day: 1-4, 5-8 etc. One beat would tell us what time it is. (1914.)"
Music
"There are 96 quarter hours in a day. So if we divided the day into hundred parts, a hundredth of a day would be about a quarter of an hour. It could be called a small clock for the time being, and later, when the old clock has been forgotten, an hour. (1891.)"
Music
"Bell music in a clock. Rhythm is the ebb and flow of the human soul. The last note repeats according to the number of the hour. If these sounds could be in two voices, it would be even more beautiful."
Music
"Cantors don't know the sound wave's crescendo-decrescendo, only that they can sing a song louder. The craftsmen of singing."
Painting and sculpture
"If the art of painting had been practised by women from the very beginning, then angel paintings would not be of women with long hair, but of men with waxed moustaches."
Painting and sculpture
"Among the arts, the only one is the art of writing, whose main task is to turn treasures of concepts into public treasures. In painting, sculpture, music, form is the main concern. Even if there is no concept, the work can be perfect. The skill of literary shaping is in itself no more valuable than the craft of bird-stuffing."
Painting and sculpture
"What remains of the sculptor's work is what the sculptor has carved - his carving. What remains of the painter's work is his painting. From the works of the writer: what in his writings is no longer writing, but thought moved from the paper to the heads and hearts."
On the back of a poster
"Drama is a work of writing illustrated with live people. Sometimes the illustration is better than the text. Sometimes."
On the back of a poster
"I read a fencing on this issue: Does the actor serve the writer, or does the writer serve the actor? And how easy it is to judge: If the actor is greater in art than the writer (in the art of writing), then the writer serves. And vice versa. Otherwise, the judgment can be made play by play, if we take the text after the play and look at it: - What has the writer given the actor? - What has the actor made out of it?"
On the back of a poster
"It is pointless to write, to say that the writer knows what is in his drama better than the actor. But anyone who talks to our state actors about this will be amazed at their opinions. But an actor should only treat a dead writer's text as a rubber man treats his own skin."
On the back of a poster
"The distribution of actors by role shows that the creative power of the writer is only rarely seen on the surface of the earth, - like a golden nugget. The figures on stage are like figurative casts: sometimes mere plaster, sometimes painted, sometimes bronzed, but always the same one or several figures."
On the back of a poster
"On Shakespeare's stage, everyone recites and everyone philosophises. For him, not life is the dream, but the dream is life."
On the back of a poster
"The public is always right. Here's the proof: If the director wants to corrupt one of his actors, he will give him a role that is not right for him. Then the audience says: - Well, we thought this actor was a great artist, but he's worthless."
On the back of a poster
"If the public doesn't like foreign drama, they say so in Hungary: - The main character couldn't act it. Or they say: - The theatre has taken on more than it can handle. But when Hungarian drama is on the stage, there is no talk of the actor or the theatre. Then it's always the author who fails."
On the back of a poster
"The structure of good drama is like that of a clock: neither one wheel more nor one wheel less. The gear teeth fit well together and the spring is strong."
On the back of a poster
"I read the poster of a theatre in a rural town: Billeting Order (Antony Mars - Henri Kéroul), Ferdinand the Roisterer (Georges Berr), Inspector of the Red Cars (Alexandre Bisson), Moving Photographs, etc. At the end of the poster, the director asks the audience for patronage. Why? This is not even a domestic industry!"
On the back of a poster
"Some country theaters are like dime stores: flashy posters, vile merchandise."
On the back of a poster
"Some theatres in the capital could also adapt their signage: The dumping ground of foreign drama literature"
On the back of a poster
"A woman does not enter the stage like a man. Her body is her main treasure: she takes it to shine where most people can see it. Few stand out because few can be more spiritual than physical. And a woman's soul, if it can emerge from earthiness, is far finer and more sublime than a man's! The trumpet is music, the harp is music. But the trumpet can only be addressed by a great wind, whereas the harp is stirred by the touch of a gentle breeze. The harp is the female soul."
On the back of a poster
"From a woman actor, we can see everything falsely acted, falsely said, except one thing: When he plays with his female co-star, and the author's instructions are to do so: Give her an eye. This is always done with startling realism."
On the back of a poster
"The donna appeared on stage in a knee-length skirt. She sang sexual songs, and at the end of the verses swung her right leg towards the audience - more than a metre high, of course. The audience applauded: - Now that's art! The donna, of course, went to bed with the feeling that she had done more for Hungarian culture that day than Jókai had done in fifty years."
On the back of a poster
"Our folk theatre writers cook the stew with more pepper than meat."
On the back of a poster
"The women of folk theatre are in fancy dress. Their hair is ironed curly. They never work, they just fluff their skirts and kiss forever. Such peasant women do not exist in Hungary."
On the back of a poster
"Taking a play off the stage is always a funeral for us writers. A part of us is dead, unresurrectable. Because the novel, short story, poem is always alive. If they are not read today, they will be read tomorrow. But no one reads plays. Not today, not tomorrow. Even the actor writes out of it what he has to play. The rest is of no interest."
On the back of a poster
"Acting is a mirage art: it is playing life for life. That is why it is more effective than any other art."
On the back of a poster
"The writer's life is just that: a footprint to be trodden on by those who follow."
Wine
"One of the amusements of youth is to get together and drink, or rather, devour wine. You will find that such carnal amusements never have good consequences, but often have bad ones. Wine makes a man a fool, a wicked man, a beast. The spiritual indisposition that follows in its wake says, I have been an animal."
Smoking
"One of the benefits of life would be smoking. But ever since the state seized the right to keep tobacco, good tobacco has been lost. Only occasionally is it grown in secret here and there and kept in cuttings, and Esau, if he were alive today and living with us, would give up not only his rights but also his lentils for a little good tobacco. Since this state of affairs is not likely to change, anyone who learns to smoke at this time is a fool. It is not a habit for daily enjoyment, but for daily wickedness. It is so easy not to learn! He who has not eaten the swallow's nest of China, will he desire it? The danger of smoking is that once you start, you can't stop."
Smoking
"The art of pipe smoking.* Smoking a pipe is for rich people, smoking a cigar is for poor people. True pipe smoking is the purest and most humane way to smoke. The reason why rich people smoke cigars is because they cannot smoke a pipe. Smoking a pipe is science."
Smoking
"The poor man's pipe smoking is a caricature of pipe smoking. It's not smoking a pipe, it's just puffing hard."
Smoking
"Only those who have time to themselves may smoke a pipe; who have plenty pipes, and made of meerschaum; whose tobacco is smuggled. The finest cigar is not worth a pipe of good tobacco. Even the finest cigar has a bitter end. A pipe gives good smoke till the last puff."
Smoking
"Cigars contain so much nicotine that people who smoke cigars all day are ruining their stomachs and nerves. A good pipe, a good tobacco, never upsets the stomach. Tobacco from Verpelét is a good way to soften tobacco. The tobacco sold in tobacconists' shops is not tobacco of the Verpelét variety, but only of the yellow leaf variety."
Smoking
"Cigarettes are for children and women. It's a mouth-bittering, hateful thing. A man who smokes cigarettes spreads the smell of tobacco ten feet around him. A man who smokes pipe is to a cigarette smoker as is a wine producer to adulterated wine."
Smoking
"The chibouk is not the real pipe either. Only Turkish tobacco can be smoked from chibouk, and Turkish tobacco has such a pungent and heavy smoke that it fills not only the room but also the stomach. It is not fit for a real smoker either."
Smoking
"From the short pipe, whether English or Hungarian, the smoke comes warm, together with the tobacco fumes. Tobacco vapour burns the tongue. The real piper fits at least an eighty centimetre stem into his pipe: the stem has large hole. The mouthpiece also has a large hole. If the stem has a narrow bore, the smoke is pungent. However fine the tobacco, however perfect the pipe, if the stem is not long enough and the hole is not big enough, there is no pleasure in smoking a pipe."
Card
"Two people come together, sometimes two good friends. One thinks: - This one has money in his pocket. And so he says in a loud voice: - Would you like to play cards? The other thinks the same: - This man has money in his pocket. And he says: - I don't mind. Ew! What a hateful thought! What a hateful ambition!"
Card
"As the man is, so is his fun. Could there be a more foolish amusement to the body, more harmful to the soul, than cards?"
Card
"The number of years on the tombstone of the card player is always a lie. He also lost years of his life playing cards."
Card
"He who wishes to play cards wishes to be able to rob his neighbour with the help of an unaccountable third hand (the hand of luck)."
Money
"You can read many good and wise sayings about money in other books. I only warn you that making money should not be your aim in life. It is true that money is a kind of power, but this power is only social. The soul is not enriched by money. Nor does it become poor as money becomes scarce. What your soul gains is the real gain."
Money
"Be thrifty, but generous with servants. Pay well for all services. He who spurns the man who serves is not a gentleman."
Money
"If you are given a gift, and if it is given with respect, honour and love, accept it, but in time return it gently. For gifts are not meant to increase your wealth with them. A gift with a hint must be rejected in jest."
Money
"It is not always the poor man who lives in a thatched house and eats bread. He is always poorer who (though he be a respectable and noble or even an excellency) is forced to do what he would not do himself."
Money
"The simpler you can live, the more you are in control of life. Only a small shelter, daily bread and decent clothes should be provided, and the rest should not be your overwhelming concern. This is not to say that those who have money should throw it away, but only that they should not live for it. Wealth, after all, is a safeguard against many inconveniences: let us be thrifty and save in our ways, but not hamsters. I do not subscribe to the views of Diogenes and Epictetus. What a man has, if he has it, is precious. It almost belongs to his body. My furnitures, my paintings, my books, my garden, my house, are as if they were part of my body. But I never forget that, just as my body is my secondary value, my possessions are even more inferior. I am sure that when I die, I will not regret the destruction of my body, nor will I regret the loss of my wealth. But as long as I live, I will take care of my body and value my wealth. Some wealth is also necessary to secure your independence. But draw the line of wealth at the point where you have a simple daily subsistence apart from your own shelter. More wealth should no longer be a sweating ambition."
Money
"Look around the world: how stupidly people live. There is the merchant. Has that man a perfect self-consciousness when he spends his whole life weighing by the pound, or by the litre, or by the kilogram, from morning till night, from New Year to New Year! Is that why you came to the Earth? Does it satisfy him? Can fate pay him in money for this lost life? Look at the lawyer. What a job it is, always running around to court, scribbling at home, digging up law books, all for silly cases that are each other's cases. If a lawyer would write down all the thoughts that went through his mind from morning till night, he'd see that his skull was a garbage can. It fills up and empties out, leaving him with nothing but the grease that's been deposited on its sides. Is that worth being born for?"
Money
"Anything you have that you say is mine, remember to add: borrowed. For all you have received from life you must give back."
Money
"Never ask for a loan. Debt turns a man into dog. But if someone asks you, always give gladly, - if you can. Give especially to him whose eyes speak the plea of affliction, and who asks in shame. And do not regard such a man as a dog, but as a brother. On the contrary, never give to a gambler, to a show-off, to a drunkard, or to a flatterer. They are better turned away from you."
Money
"When will we become wealthy? The man answers: - When we get. The angel answers: - When we give."
Money
"Money for the wise man: a servant in the pocket. To the unwise man: a master in the pocket."
Bread
"My publisher once had the idea of writing a cookbook with the writers. The muse ties a bun and stirs the roux. Typical for the age, mind your stomach. Many people are deceived by the German pun that a man is what he eats. The excellence of the human spirit is not developed at the dinner table. Let's look through the series from Homer to Petőfi, and let's look through the series that lives through the year with Baron Brisse's 366 menus. Homer did not drink champagne, Petőfi did not know the table of Brillat-Savarin. The Wise Man of Nazareth tore and ate wheat on the road. Napoleon grew up next to a lousy cauldron in a military school. Socrates ate salad without vinegar oil and bacon. Spinoza was glad to have bread. Burns and Arany both produced their flowery thoughts at a peasant's table. Where is the spirit in the picky eaters? Numbers prove that the aristocratic class gives the least thought to mankind, and experience proves that cooks are in line with tenorists in the matter of mind. In 1892, an old vine-hayward died in Nagykőrös. He lived for one hundred and four years and was never ill. During those one hundred and four years, the man ate no other food, but bread, and drank nothing but water. I would not dare to say that he was a vine-hayward because he lived like that. If by chance he had the soul of Kant, he would have been a first-rate star of philosophy even with such a lifestyle. If everyone got used to living like this from a young age, what a different view of the world it would be! Thousands and thousands of millions of people would be freed from the chains of office and raise their heads from abject servitude. But it is man's destiny to revolve around his own stomach. Fish-farmers put pike in the pond to keep the fish from getting lazy and thus their flesh from becoming flabby. The Creator put a stomach in man, so that he who has no nobler work to do may move and work. Thus the life of the multitude is nothing but carrying to the table, and the chief delight of the multitude is to eat. But the nation is perishing which makes the table an altar, and holds Lucullus to be the noblest man. The fortunes of the Roman and Greek empires were hatched between plates of earthenware and sacrificed between bowls of gold."
People living on plants
"I was in Munich. I went down to the vegetarian restaurant at noon. I look at the menu: lots of different dishes. Most with sour cream. Plenty of butter and cottage cheese. Egg dishes, too. One guest drank milk instead of wine. The place got busy. A friendly German came to my table. We chatted. I ask him if they don't eat meat because the food is healthier that way? Or because they feel that killing an animal is a beastly act? He replies: - For both reasons. - So now tell me: is it possible that at some point all people will convert to a vegetarian lifestyle? - We hope so. - But what do they do with all the roosters that hatch from eggs. - Nothing. Let them live and crow. - I see you're not a farmer, so you can let them. But poultry need forage seeds, even in summer. Forage seeds cost money. And then the roosters themselves kill each other: only one remains in the yard. - Well, that settles it, laughs the German. - Good. But look: you also eat milk. The cow doesn't give milk until after calving. And every cow often have bull calves. Where does the world put all those bulls? Because in just a few years there would be so many bulls in the world... - They also kill each other. - No, they don't. They just knock each other aside. Go to another frontier! And in time they'll graze the grasslans, the fields, the wheat fields, the barley fields, the beet fields, the corn fields... And more and more and more. The German could not answer. Maybe other vegetarians can."
Capital
"The train left Rákos. The weather was sunny; the sky blue. And in the distance a large yellowish-brown mountain of fog could be seen. It reached from the ground to the sky. But it was not fog, it was dirty air. A fellow traveller looked out of the window and said: - We're approaching the capital."
Capital
"The man from Pest. We cannot say the man of the capital, because any other European capital is a buzzing point of vitality for the nation. But where is Hungarian life bubbling in Budapest? Let us look at Paris, London, or just next door Vienna: Austrian air, Austro-German inhabitants; in architecture, German artlessness; in customs, German honesty; warmth; families visit each other; they come in groups to restaurants and theatres. Is the air in Pest Hungarian? Is the image of the streets Hungarian? Do you see something in the buildings that has a Hungarian soul? Listen to their speech, watch their movements, watch their politeness. The lack of herd instinct. Every man is a separated soul. When they meet, you see no joy on their faces, In their conversation the inner soul is silent; Farewell hands are not warm."
Capital
"In the city man has at least two clothes and two faces. One: the one he wears in society. The other: the one he wears at home."
Capital
"Masquerade ball: people dressed as animals. Daytime life: animals dressed as people."
Capital
"The city. From a distance, the city air is smoke. Up close, it's dirt. It's as if the air also affects the psyche of city dwellers. City people are born with glasses. So he is at least forty years old when he enters this world. What a life for a child in the capital. His eyes see only houses and shop next to shop. Only business and business and the world is only business. Growing up without flowers, without fields, without trees. He sees no birds but in cages. He sees only as much of the sky as he can see from the street frames. Cows were driven along the boulevard and the children ran after them. They don't eat real food. His pantry is tin. When he wants to eat soup, he boils water and takes a spoonful of ointment from a tin. The flame of the soul is the intellect. The oil of this flame is morality. There is no such oil in the city. The flame is not white, but multicoloured. Even if we sometimes hear a speech that radiates spiritual nobility, it turns out to be nothing but parlour morality. The word 'parlour goulash' comes to mind. The cook makes it - for the consumption of others."
Capital
"The man in the capital lives as if his life's purpose is to illustrate this medical issue by example: - What is the quickest way to wear out the human body?"
Capital
"The bee could be the emblem of a rural people. For the people of the capital, the lame carriege horse, running around till daybreak."
The country
"- Up! When that is the slogan, the Hungarian nation is powerless. - Down! When this is the motto, the Hungarian nation is strong. The Hungarian nation is like gunpowder, which only puffs in the open air, but if a stone is pressed against it, the greater the pressure, the more thunderous and lightning-quick it bursts out."
The country
"How can a Lutheran bishop anoint someone a Catholic priest? How can a German family that has never been naturalized here name a Hungarian a noble?"
The country
"The language has added the word royal to the decorative adjectives. Often we hear or read royal stature, royal dignity, royal collar, and the like. But it has never been said: - Royal mind."
The country
"When a king is born, he's somebody as soon as he lets out the first squeak. His person, however dull, is linked to the fate of millions. All his life he smells nothing but incense and frankincense. But as soon as he's stuck in the crypt, his face and his reverence are consigned to the repository."
The country
"Whenever I see the name of our king, I always stop to look at the I written in front of it. How can someone be first when there is no second? (Franz Joseph I)"
The country
"What concept of people's lives can an archduke have? who doesn't know what little money means? what is poverty in clothes? in housing? bread? does not know what most of the people do to work. And such become kings, entrusted with the government of millions of lives."
The country
"If Széchenyi's Valhalla had been accepted as the Academy, the first thing the enthusiastic nation would have done would have been to erect a statue of Ferdinand V., and today the Hall of Fame would be full of Habsburgs. And the political servants of the Habsburgs. From time to time, they would kick the statues out and throw them down like the pagan Hungarians did with Bishop Gellért."
The country
"However sadly we may look back over the four hundred years of the Habsburg kings, let us be fair: every Habsburg king has given the Hungarian nation two days of joy. One day was the day on which he was crowned. The other was the day on which he died."
The country
"The revival of Hungary began before Széchenyi. The language renewalists, though they were also tongue-lashers, were the oil for the lamp which Széchenyi then lit and carried around before the minds. Széchenyi was a sent soul, like Kossuth, Deák and the three writers Petőfi, Arany and Jókai. The caterpillar that moults suffers from a sleeping sickness. After the illness it is more beautiful, healthier, stronger, bigger. What a wonderful rebuilding of a (vile one to us) worm-body creature. But the laws, the rules, the requisites of reconstruction were already in him. All the patterns of the flower's life are similar. The man, the worm, the grass seed, the star-family of the sun: all have Intelligence behind them."
Society
"Shall we fly in our minds over the highway of time by which man walking on all fours came to mankind now living, and fly the same way forward. We will discover that the man who will be alive then will see the man of today as much as an animal, just as we see the old man today."
Society
"The beehive, they say, is a small image of the human state. But I see that the bee state is more perfect. In them, the drones are of the lower order."
Society
"The best state is the one in which the citizen has the greatest independence and security. What does the soldier think about personal independence? And about personal and property security, the one whose bed is auctioned off in tax arrears?"
Society
"The French national motto: Liberté, egalité, fraternité. If fraternité, why egalité? The concept of fraternity includes equality."
Society
"The caveman who first wrinkled his nose at his fellow man took the first step towards education."
Society
"Social classes are separated not by pride, nor by money, nor by broadcloth, but by soap."
Society
"Matches in the world order: Every living being is one being. Around it is the family. Around family is kinship. Around kinship is the nation. Around the nation, the other-speaking races. The order of the stars is the same. Our head of the family is the Sun. The suns are surely a group again. The group of suns is again the inner circle of a larger circle."
Society
"Raise your hats before the altar on which stands the divinity of Public Opinion; but take her image out of your rooms. There never yet was a man born in the world who, while he lived on this earth, was looked upon with due reverence by the Public. Jesus was the best man in the world, and was cast by the public in the midst of criminals. Columbus was considered a fool by the public. Dobó turned grey in prison. Petőfi was called a braggart wandering comedian by the Public, and was nearly lynched when he tried to become a Member of Parliament. However, Public Opinion puts undeserving people in the place of the deserving. Why talk about it: there is world history. A foolish man is one who adjusts his own watch to the clock of Public Opinion."
Loneliness
"You will know people who live alone. Most of these have a reputation for being man-haters. But this is not always true. A misanthrope is always a bad man, and although he hates people, he lives among them. Perhaps he hates them because he lives among them. But he needs hatred, just as the poison in the belladona is one of the constituents of its life."
Loneliness
"A solitary man cannot be a man-hater if for no other reason than that where there are no bones, there are no bones to chew. The cause of man-avoidance is either sickness, or spiritual work which demands silence; or, simply, the overdevelopment above the masses, - the consequence of which is that human love becomes a frozen principle, because contact with men becomes boring to such a one. But if the man-avoider is a man of integrity, he is always a man of spirit."
Loneliness
"If you meet someone who is shy, blushing, confused, casts his eyes down, be so submissive to them, mimicking shyness, that they may come to their senses. This is a good deed."
Woman
"We should always respect the mother in a woman. Even when motherhood is far away. Even when she is long past it. I am touched by the invisible eternal river of Infinity every time I see a mother. She is the fruit tree of God. On her the soul from the Infinite blossoms. From the blood of her heart it takes flesh. I always feel that she is God's agent. The rainbow of heaven when it reaches down, touches woman's shoulder."
Woman
"If we are indeed the biblical fallen angels, man fell from a higher place than woman. But the woman has more of the wing left."
Woman
"The man in himself: a round whole. The woman: always a fraction, always finding her complement in somebody else. That other is usually a man, but it can also be a woman. Two women can be a whole, three even more so, but a woman alone is, according to her own feeling, is an incomplete person."
Woman
"Women write with water, speak with fire. Among men, there are many with a stammering tongue; women always speak without mistakes. Among men there are many who speak slowly, among women there are more who speak fast. Are there ever women who stutter, stammer?"
Woman
"The most prosaic spectacle in the world would be to be able to recall and observe in one company the ladies whose names and persons are known from the poems of the poets."
Woman
"On the main gate of the 1900 Paris exhibition, Paris was represented by a young woman dressed in a pongee. To me, Paris didn't look like that, but more like an old dame with make-up on her face, smoking cigarettes, drinking absinthe and laughing with false teeth."
Woman
"It's always strange to me when people say about someone: He seduced this woman and that woman. It's like saying about someone: - He taught this fish and that fish to swim..."
Woman
"If women knew how much a clever eye can beautify the face, - they would always keep quiet."
Woman
"Feminists mention two or three women's names that are famous in intellectual and artistic work. Of course: there are women with beards too."
Sixth commandment
"When you go to a woman whom your intellect judges not to be right for you, and yet you do depart, yet you go: you are a leashed animal."
Sixth commandment
"Why is the Sixth Commandment odious to literacy and alphabetization? Every part of our body is a wonderful creation. Yet when we become self-conscious, we obey less and less the separate wills and desires of our bodies. We are less and less at one with our bodies. Our spiritual instincts become increasingly separate from our physical instincts. The stages of spiritual development would be pictured as a moving away from the flesh. We would see the child (and the uncivilized people living on the line of childish underdevelopment) not feeling any difference in the parts of their body: they always do what their body makes them do. We would see the youth who has already mastered the instincts of his body in many ways, but the instinct of species preservation still leads him easily on a leash. We could see the man who is already jerking the leash and trying to tear it away. We shall eventually see him on the higher steps of spiritual development, mastering the force and like Hercules trampling the serpent under foot. Here we have already learned that we are souls chained to animals. Standing on these steps, we look with contempt, both in real life and in imagination (in anecdotes, readings, pictures), on the man who has not yet developed from animalism, his thoughts and actions, which are still in homage to the animal part of our double earthly being."
Marriage
"Three things you should never do in a hurry: 1. eating fish; 2. shaving; 3. getting married."
Marriage
"Marriage for the eyes: he married a fairy. Marriage in fact: married to a wretched."
Marriage
"All the hot water cools when it is removed from the fire. This is what happens to marriage, which boils on fleshly flames."
Marriage
"The more advanced you are, the less you think with your imagination. Imagination is just a household musician. I listen to it when I want to."
Marriage
"Bachelor: - I'm glad I didn't get married. I see how much trouble they cause, how eternally unpleasant the brats are! Father: - You don't know, however, that it's always someone else's children who are the brats."
Marriage
"Beware of a marriage whose altar flame is not lit by the heart. Nature is a terrible judge! No punishment comes with chains so heavy as those which she punishes for a non-virtuous marriage. Throughout your life you limp its punishment."
Marriage
"When the priest blesses a marriage of convenience, he is blessing a crime. And when he speaks of the indissolubility of a bad marriage, - the devil laughs and claps at his words."
Marriage
"The marriage vow: I will never leave her. And already lying - is abandonment."
Marriage
"A man of solitude: a whole man. The man who lives for company: partial man. This is evident from the fact that they feel that each other's cause is their own. They even care about who bought what hat or boots for how much. And what they really care about is who has what income and expenses, and how they live with their partner."
Marriage
"He who is a slave to woman is a slave to Earth. And he who is free from woman is free from his own animality."
Marriage
"The light-headed young people who get married think that marrying someone is like buying something in a shop. For example, we see a walking stick in the window, we like it, - we buy it. Then it's ours. We walk around with it, spin it around, tuck it under our arm or wave it around. We get bored, we lean it in the corner, - we put it away for tomorrow. But the nice young people are amazed when they see that it is not they who walk and spin and whirl the walking stick, but the other way round. And they don't put it in the corner, they themselves are placed there."
Marriage
"He who wants to succeed in married life should always accept what the woman wants, but always do what he himself wants. The wife always accepts the explanation, because the main thing is that the husband does not contradict her, and even honours her by justifying and explaining why it could not have been otherwise."
Marriage
"The man: - You're mine. Woman: - I'm yours. And then comes married life, in which the saying is placed the other way round."
Marriage
"There is no sin punished by God as much as that committed by man against his own heart. He who sells his heart."
Marriage
"Two people bound together by love. Their bond is celestial. They agree to live life together. - "The bond of heaven is not enough!" interrupts the state. And in the name of morality forges an iron chain on their hands and feet. - The earthly bond is not enough, says the Church. And in the name of heaven he forges another chain to the other. It happens that the two lovers, disappointed in their hopes, say: - We are not happy. There is no point in living together. Then they notice the two chains. Then they wonder for the first time what the church and state have done to them. They must be removed. But you have to grate into the flesh too. And this is our age we call the age of clarity."
Marriage
"At the age of 20-25, we don't know what we are made of. Your thinking can change seven times between the ages of 20 and 30. But at that age we make a marriage for life, and some Catholics make it indissoluble, others hard to dissolve. The one we marry is also an incomplete person, subject to change. Is it not then foolish to make such a contract?"
Marriage
"I saw an ancient picture: A Roman girl placing a bunch of flowers on the altar. When a woman gets married, she brings her life to her husband as such a flower offering."
Marriage
"A wife is the second heart of a man. That is why we must not ask her for too much wisdom. Always speak to her in the language of a child, because that is what she understands best; and always touch her with a velvet hand, because her skin is sensitive. The highest degree of warmth is pleasant to her, but she is more sensitive to cold than a palm tree."
Marriage
"Many marriages would be happy if the man remained as attentive to the woman as he was before the wedding. And she as bashful and angelic."
Marriage
"Laocoon, if depicted alone, would be an excellent symbol of a bad marriage."
Marriage
"Marriage was created by God. The devils made the law of marriage. God says marriage lasts as long as love lasts. According to the devil, even in hatred, until death."
Marriage
"The bad woman in girlhood: viper in a terrarium. After marriage: viper released."
Marriage
"Wedding ring in the window. - Think before you go in to buy it, it's a leftover link from the slave system of bygone eras. - But how can I think: I'm in love!"
Marriage
"At the end of suicide news there is usually this stereotypical sentence: He committed the act in a moment of insanity. The same sentence could be added to most marriage news."
Marriage
"Before going onto the bridge, the elephant stretches its front leg forward and stomps on it. Marriage is the most elusive bridge in human life. And we, when we come to that bridge, don't have as much sense as the elephant."
Marriage
"A hundred people say: - Don't take her! An inner voice speaks: - Take her! Ignore the advice of a hundred people. And a thousand men say: - Take her! And the inner voice says: - Don't take her! Follow the advice of the inner voice."
Marriage
"Marriage is mostly unhappy because the woman forgets that she is an angel. And the man even forgets that she is a woman."
Marriage
"Every married man should frame this saying of Jesus: Blessed are the peacemakers. Of course it should be in the woman's room!"
Marriage
"When we laugh, we always laugh at others. When we cry, we always cry for ourselves."
Family
"The flower is developed by sunlight, the human soul by love. He whose neck has never been clasped by the hand of a child, who has never heard a child's lips say, "Father," who has never trembled in the shadow of death for a child, who has never bowed his soul to God in thanksgiving for the survival of a child, such a man has received a fragment of the world of feeling. His life on earth, however luxurious the train he rode, - he rode in a tunnel."
Family
"The child is an angel landed on earth, who does not yet know that his little feet are dusty."
Family
""The old do not understand the young!" Now I'm an "old fart" myself, I know that: "The young don't understand the old". The old man has lived through that green age of enthusiasm in which the young are raving. He has lived through the mistakes that young people think are the right way. The old man no longer dances, but he knows what dancing is. And old men, when they were young, used to talk trash about old men. (-1921-)"
Nobility
"Neither family is older than the other, except that those who were prosperous had their names painted on parchment, and those who were poor had their names written on a piece of wood at most - when they died. Our ancestors must have been people like that. I know nothing good or bad about them. My paternal grandfather was a locksmith in Sopron and then in Nemeskér. All I know about him is that he was a quick-tempered man and that the family spoke, felt and thought in Hungarian. But they also knew German, because the only book they had was the bible, buried with my father, a German book. And my maternal grandfather was a small landowner and tavern keeper, judge and jury, probably a peasant type of man in Szőllősgyörök. His name was Sándor Nagy. But he couldn't have been a pure peasant either, because he married the daughter of a teacher cantor, who not only knew how to peel potatoes, but could also play the organ. But his forefathers were peasants, knifers from Somogy, not nobles. Our nobility is not from the king, but from God. It begins from the moment my father took up the sword in 1848 and came home from Vienna, offering his fortune and his life to his country. If you are surprised that his name is German, you should know that he always intended to have it Magyarized, but as a man who did not know the ways of public administration, he postponed it year after year. On his mother's side, however, the physical forms of which you bear with me, if you search, you will find such names: Nagy, Csutorás, Henics, Paizs."
Nobility
"The real aristocrats are not barons, counts or princes, but those who feel separate from their bodies."
Nobility
"Title, rank, membership (election committee, casino, academy, house of magnates, etc.) - and other such things, the clinging, the elbowing, the jostling, - silk tie on a skeleton."
Honour
"Only an honest man is a man. Honour is one of the great pillars of society. But why is honesty not a mandatory requirement for politics? Why is there no tribunal of nations to judge between two nations that are at loggerheads? Is it not a common cause of mankind that one nation should not be oppressed by villainy and poaching? (Poland. Austria's policy towards us.)"
Honour
"The more evolved a soul is, the less it seeks its own happiness at the expense of the happiness of others. And when one reaches the highest level of life on earth, he is already helping his fellow men to prosper even at his own expense. There are also races of people just so: nobles and lowly. The inferior races seek to acquire and increase their own wealth by harming other races."
Hate
"Delete this word from your dictionaries: hate. Put all evil under this title: imperfection. Hate is an animal emotion in us. The perfect man may face imperfection with away looking, smile, dislike, contempt, corrective intent, etc., but never with hatred. Hate carries with it weapons and poison, and a devilish face. Let it never find accommodation in you."
Hate
"Everything that I see as beautiful increases the light of my soul. It makes me stronger, better, more divine. Everything I hate and yet deal with diminishes the strength and clarity of my soul. Hate passes over the human soul like a cloud, and obscures the sun in proportion to its size and thickness."
Hate
"Love is always spiritual. Hate is always corporeal. Love is a source of light and warmth. Hate is darkness and coldness. In love we are gods. In hate we are animals."
Hate
"The Antichrist will be a modern gentleman who will invent the smokeless silent rifle. That invention will destroy kings first. Then the millionaires. Then the social order. Finally, just as the flood once destroyed mankind, the silenced rifle will destroy mankind in a flood of blood. And once again one family will survive. And from that family will come a new kind of mankind that will know no hate."
Hate
"The sky is not black at night. Only dark blue. Among the colours of the rainbow there is no black. Black is an earthly colour. In the hand of hatred is crap. In the hand of love is a gold-painting tool."
Hate
"Only from the lips of angels could such a song be sung: Glory to God in heaven, on earth peace to man. It should shine with golden letters in every house, so that those who have bitter thoughts in their heads may remember the angelic words. He is not happy who does not treasure peace."
Will
"The locomotive has steam, the man has will. In childhood, it manifests itself day after day and year after year in the form of a one-way interest and willingness. The play of the kitten and the play of the toddler is the will for a later life career."
Will
"The more thought and energy the will gathers and carries in one direction, the more powerfully that man will later stand out from his fellows in that direction."
Will
"The concentration of the will and the striving in one direction - this is the condition for the success of all work. The more united this will, the more straightforwardly and the more earnestly it strives to accomplish something, the more significant and the more excellent its work. For example, someone wants to know English. If he sets out and his every thought from morning till night is English, he translates and takes notes, reads grammar books, groups words, mumbles English words as he walks, after two months he is reading English books without a dictionary. But if he starts thinking about French the next day, then German the week after, puts one down, picks up another, remembers to paint something, or gets a sheet of music, goes out to play cards, then learns English again, well, he'll know in 10 years."
Will
"The lives of magnates and royalty are unhappy because their every wish is granted by fate. Their desire can therefore seldom give birth to a will that can be realized by their own efforts. In other words, they have no willpower, so they are bored and do not know what to do."
Will
"The first condition of happiness on earth is to work the will towards a goal without digression, without slackening. For one of the genres of happiness is: the sight of a job well done, the feeling of success. Work shows what one is worth."
Will
"The strength of will is always in the intellectual development. The monkey cannot concentrate his attention for a minute, half a minute. We see that his mind is always scattered. Just so the child. The more superior the mind, the more powerfully it can concentrate and direct the will in one direction. We see in the history of great men that they can turn their will to one work for years, for decades. They do nothing else, they care for nothing else. In fact, in some people, the will for some great deed or great idea or great art is already manifested in childhood, and they work for its realization for the rest of their lives. Liszt, Paganini. How could Paradise Lost, Aeneid, all the heroic poems, the great dictionaries, etc., have been written without this persistence of will?"
The body
"Look at those who say: I do not believe in life on earth; - they are all men who feel their bodies to be self. And look at those who raise their eyes to heaven with confidence, all feel that the body is not the self, but the power that moves the body."
The body
"A man bears a wound on his body, and his soul is cheerful, he does not feel the wound. A man bears a wound in his soul, and the body digests in peace, as if it had nothing to do with it. Feelings are physical and spiritual. This should be understood. The body is a handcuff. The soul carries it wherever it wants. But will the prisoner die if his shackles fall off? If we had no body, what would bind us to the earth? If we didn't have to eat, if we didn't have to preserve our race, if we didn't have to defend anything, would we work? But we must work for ourselves and for each other. He who sent us down to earth knows what he has done, and we who are here on earth can see the power, the order, the light above our heads every day."
The body
"It is not the man for the house, but the house for the man. The body is a house. ?How the monists explain that all our thoughts and actions are not a house! Ostwald himself spoils his body with the work of a desk and a laboratory. Then our bodies are second-class things after all!"
The body
"What is physical life? Is it not a temporary state? What is suffering? Is it not a voluntary Penance to ourselves? What is death? Is it not a transformation into another state of soul? And what is family? Is it not the joining together of broken links? And what is the power in man that stirs the heart in the face of evil, and stirs it in the face of good? What is the force that impels man to improvement, to perfection?"
The body
"After all, if we came to this Earth to perfect, how can we fail life? Can we not doubt the wisdom of the Creator if such mistakes can be made on the path of life? Is this one of our faults, that we regard the Creator as living for our sake, as if God had no other concern than to guide us, like the Vlach guide the mountain climbers! What if he is not for us, but we are for him? Surely the cause of our error is not God, but ourselves. But why? Man's greatest treasure is free will. We have certainly been given this treasure in full. God did not want to bind us to himself one iota. God did not want to rule over us, nor did he want to bind us to himself by law or decree. We were pure souls. But it was the joy of free will, of trying out absolute independence, that allowed our butterfly wings to take hold: we flew where we wanted to fly. We got away from him. Maybe we wanted to be gods. Maybe we wanted to create a new world. Maybe we are the fallen angels that every race, every religion knows about. We're departed, obscured, like the glass in the ground. Our powers are gone, our celestial qualities are all that remains but a flicker of love, a languid creative force manifested in the arts, the music and the vague memory of God's name. Did God create this material world, or is it still our creation from that great time? Is it myth the paradise, or an ancestral memory transformed into earthly concepts? Is it myth the forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or is it the shrinking of the great story into a small allegory? Is it myth the departure from Paradise? Is it myth the confusion of Babel? Or is it an earthly colourful fairy-tale image of a great revolution in the sky? And who was Jesus, this man of wondrous intellect, who at once appeared among us and brought news from the world beyond the stars; whose heart was not an earthly heart, whose thinking was not an earthly thinking. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why did he come? He himself answers all these questions. Whether his word is true? four have written the story of his suffering. None of them mention that he retracted his claims, nor that he asked for mercy. No one has ever allowed himself to be executed for a lie."
The body
"Everyone has to mature through corporeality. The child and the young never feel themselves to be anything other than a body. And some people live their whole lives without ever having a moment of realisation. But as long as a man does not come to spiritual self-knowledge in his own feeling, all reasoning is in vain. It is in vain to open the eyes of a cat when it is two days old: it cannot see. But by the eighth day its eyes open of their own accord, and then it can see even in the dark. There are learned and educated men who say that man's proof of his celestial citizenship is false, and there are simple uneducated men to whom it is unnecessary to show such proof: they know where they belong. The eagle sees the sun; it needs no astronomical proof. A mineworm does not believe such a light if anyone claims it and proves it to him. He who has well-developed ears hears music. He that has deaf ears, he can hear the violin in vain, even if it is Kubelik's. Yet it is not useless to talk about it. Those who dig for gold are always glad to hear the experiences of other prospectors. Those who are already in the right direction will be confirmed by the sign of the pointer tree, if it agrees with their direction. Those already groping at the door don't have to look so hard for the handle. And the father can best speak to his children, for the child, if he does not understand, will take the father's hand with confidence: it is certain that this hand will not lead him astray."
Spiritual awakening
"What are the signs of spiritual awakening? Man learns that his hands are not he, his feet are not he, his ears are not he. Until now he did not identify himself only with his hair, now his sense of identity is separated from his limbs: The hand is only a plier and a percussion instrument. If it is cut off, neither my mind nor my memory is stunted. The leg is only a walking, lifting tool. Though nearly half of my body, if I lose it, my consciousness is not diminished, my spiritual talents are not diminished. But what kind of a carriage is it whose wheels can be lost, whose handlebars can break, and yet feel like a whole carriage? If some parts of my body can be lost without my soul lacking anything, it is certain that my stomach is not me, my lungs are not me, my eyes are not me, and my brain is not me. If one part of the body is an instrument, the other is an instrument. Meat, meat. Why should the brain marrow be an exception. The brain is just matter. And matter doesn't think. That's how we divide our knowledge and our feeling of what we are: Me and my body. But what am I and what is my body? I am a soul. And my body is flesh. I am the coachman, my body is the coach. The carriage is a prison! Why are we in this moving prison? We do not know. Our files are sealed and lying in unknown archives. Our memories are out there somewhere, like the old prisoner's old diary in the prison archives. Where is that archive? Where are the records? Where do they condemn us? Why? We'll find out when the keymaster comes for us."
Spiritual awakening
"If you are on a train and you have a question to ask, who do you ask if not the conductor? If we are on a different road, and we meet a group of people, do we not go to the person we think is the most knowledgeable in the area? Whom do we ask in the wanderings of the spiritual path? Surely not to men of the flesh, but to men of the spirit. Those who steer the bits and reins with the strongest hand; those whose sense of home is stronger than ours; those whose minds are clearer than ours. For they know best the way, the truth, the life. Jesus was the man of the most advanced spirit on earth; no man mentions the separateness of soul and body so often as he does, so no man felt it so much, no man was so well informed in this respect as he was, no man can give such sure instruction as he can. His instructions are written in the Gospels."
Spiritual awakening
"It is interesting that Jesus calls the corporeal man dead. One of his disciples asks: - Let me go and bury my father. Jesus replies: - Follow me. Let the dead bury the dead. Jesus is not even understood by the bodily man. The gospels are just stories to them, or gibberish. But do not the child and the astronomer look at the sky with different eyes? The spiritual man understands the words of Jesus, and he understands the cry of his audience: - No man ever spoke like this!"
Spiritual awakening
"I write so much about this distinction, - it is not in vain. A good mason lays a strong foundation for the building. Life, when built on spirituality, is very different from the life of the flesh. The body is an animal. The soul is a god (god with a small "g"). The carnal man lives an animal life. The spiritual man lives a divine life. Carnal man sees no goal, only an end: a grave. The spiritual man sees a goal and knows that the grave is not his end, but only the end of his body. For the world is not this earth, life is not just the life of the body. Understanding this is the bridge through which we can cross to the right path."
Spiritual awakening
"Incorrect and of a low standard is also a purely carnal life. Since the purpose of our life should be only the care and multiplication of the flesh, this may be the conception of life in Kőbánya ("Stone Quarry"), but not even there in people's homes. If machines had minds, they would know at once that they were made not only to move and digest oil. Shall man be comforted in knowing that his existence is inferior to mechanical ends? In vain: there are such meat-machines. Indeed, they know no other purpose than digestion, breeding, and the gathering of the substances which sustain them. Such people are then affected by a family bereavement as if they had been struck on the forehead with a fist. But of course: the life of the flesh was considered the life of man, and if the flesh perishes, so does our life. But then a mysterious voice within the heart spoke: - It cannot be, it cannot be that man should perish thus! The agonized man then lifts up his head and cries out: - A drop of water! Lazarus, a drop of water! But in vain would Lazarus give a drop of water, he would only increase the thirst. You can't make a tree grow, blossom, and fruit in five minutes. Nor can spiritual self-knowledge, trust in God, be woven into reason all at once. But how can there be faith and reassurance for one who has only looked at the sky when he has contemplated the position of the clouds. Was the only thing he cared if his hair was right on his face, when he looked in the mirror? who seeks only refreshment in nature: who knows the four Jacks from card game but not the four Evangelists, and who has never sought nor studied the great thinkers of mankind, but will not hesitate to call them names. You, my sons, do not live such a carnal life, but a spiritual one. All for the soul! For the flesh, only that it may not be a nuisance."
Spiritual awakening
"The life of the flesh also has its own Trinity: The Table. The Bed. And the Money. What is outside of these can be divided into two classes: Pleasant. Unpleasant. Pleasant is idleness, ignorance, debauchery, theft, robbery, fornication, hypocrisy, fraud, and any money gain. Unpleasant: work, cultivation of yourselves, moderation, helping the wretched, forgiveness, sacrifices for the good of your country and mankind, clean living, honour, and human goodness in general. Observe that all who hold this Earth to be the World are men of limited minds. They are mostly big-bodied and fat. Tightly occupied with the cares of life or the collection of money. When not busy, they are lovingly stroking their stomachs, skirt-chasers. If not, they are cunning, cruel. Those of them that seem clever, their cleverness is not real, but a sort of fox craftiness."
Spiritual awakening
"Life is as logical a consequence as any other consequence. There is no consequence without a precedent. But if we lived before, why don't we remember it? He who descends into the mine does not take a sundial with him. He who goes hunting doesn't carry a lime brush. He who goes to swim doesn't take a cabbage shredder. Life on earth is a short journey from the land of eternity. We bring only what we need: individuality, inclinations, strengths, abilities, and a spiritual compass pointing in these two main directions: Good and evil."
Spiritual awakening
"1. The soul knows itself. 2. The soul examines itself and the body separately. (St. Paul already says: I see one law in my body and another in my mind.) But long before that, and even before the letters of history, there was already a belief in the life of the dead, and therefore a consciousness of the separateness of the soul. 3. If the body is infected, the soul does not feel infected. 4. The severed body parts. The soul never feels mutilated. 5. In the development of the body, neither history nor natural science cannot show a single line, but in the development of the soul we can go back to the animal state and look ahead to the dazzling future. 6. Scientists have examined every molecule of the brain-brain, and are acquainted with it down to the microscopic limits, but none of them has succeeded in finding where, in which part, the self-consciousness is located."
Spiritual awakening
"We see the plant sprout, blossom, wilt and die. We see man sprout, bloom and die. Is that the end of the plant? The end of man? Does the plant have no seed? Does not the seed sprout again into the same kind of plant? If the seed is not dead, it carries on the life of that plant into a new life. Then there is something eternal in that seed. But where did that eternal come from in the first seed of the plant from which the first plant sprang? Well, when the earth dies out, from the last seed will come that which is eternal in it, from whence that mysterious eternal came into the first seed."
Soul
"We reach the top on this Earth when we feel separate from our Body. The imperfect man is one with his body, his body is him. The perfect man looks upon his body only as his clothes."
Soul
"Every soul is a particle of God. It is also evident from the fact that everyone feels himself to be the centre of the universe. And we cannot imagine that we have not always been and will not always be."
Soul
"If this were the world, why are all people evolving towards spirituality? What is the enrichment of the soul for, if the soul has no purpose or life of its own? What is love after the child's robe is cast away?"
Soul
"There are great railway stations in the world, but we arrive at the greatest when we first understand the soul in this word: I. From then on we are in the kingdom of reason. No more vicinal, no more meandering! We are moving on, through smaller and larger stations, towards the centre of the world, whose name is: - Perfection."
Soul
"Philosophers talk only about the infinity of space and time, as if there were no other infinities. But they are right under our noses. Life, and all the phenomena of life. Everything that is incomprehensible and immeasurable is also infinite."
Soul
"The misconception of our life comes from considering these two concepts as one: human and human body."
Soul
"The peasant looks at the star. To him it's just a white spark. The scientist looks at the star. To him it's a world spinning in the distance. The sage looks at the star. To him a shining guide to Eternity."
Soul
"He who has spent his whole life in carnal thoughts cannot understand the vision of spiritual men. He is like the peasant who digs a well and has never seen an artesian well, and speaks like one: - It cannot be true! Because I have dug three hundred wells, and not one of them has produced hot water. We must drill deep in our thinking, then we shall find the water of life."
Soul
"The violin does not sing by itself, only when it is played by reason. The human body is a violin."
Soul
"The soul in the brain = the glass lens in the camera box. Eye = photographic plate. The plate can be used for anything the lens can record."
Soul
"The saying Mens sana in corpore sano does not mean that the more Toldi Miklós (a legendary strong hero in Hungarian folklore) is a man, the stronger his soul is. There are more weak-bodied heroes of thought than strong ones. And there are many who are paralytic, lame, hunchbacked, blind, sickly! It was a proverb with the ancient Romans: - Dumb as a gladiator."
Soul
"If the wholeness of the body determined the wholeness of the soul, then the Iliad Odyssey would have been written by Hercules, the Aeneid by Achilles. Then butchers and slaughtermen would all be academics. Acrobats would write the most beautiful articles for the newspapers; and the Petőfi Society would be full of gymnastics teachers."
Soul
"How long does the understanding evolve? We see that for some people it is up to the age of 20, for others up to the age of 30, for others up to the age of 40 or 50. If the soul were the vapour of the body, or whatever it is, it should blossom in every man at the age of 24."
Soul
"The inscription of the church of Delphi to the carnal man: word, word, word. The spiritual man is amazed that even in that ancient world there was a thinking mind that knew that man did not know himself. Does he who has never seen the sea know the feeling that moves him when he first sees it? Can he who has not yet been struck by great fortune, who has not yet been struck by great adversity, by great terror, imagine what feelings all this stirs up from the depths of the soul? He who has not yet escaped from peril; does he know how much he loves his life? He who has not yet buried mother, father, brother, child, knows the link that binds their souls? Do we not stand dumbfounded at the inward flicker of our anger or love, and ask: - Well, is this what I am? The soul of man is a folded flame of fire. We only know some of its rays ourselves. Just enough to illuminate the progress of our life on earth."
Soul
"The Olybius's pot in which they say - eternal flame burned... Man is also an earthenware pot."
Soul
"This expression: my body, - is correct. This expression: my soul, - is not correct. Instead of my soul, it should be said: I."
Soul
"When we look at a portrait of a famous person, we want to see what is invisible: their soul."
Soul
"Every action we take is an answer to this question: Who am I? The more unusual the action, the stronger the answer."
Soul
"The relationship between body and soul is like that of two people sleeping in a narrow bed: the restless one pushes aside the resting one."
Soul
"The seeker of spiritual truths moves like a miner in a treasure land, working step by step for a grain of gold. Sometimes it takes him days not to find it, but sometimes it crumbles before him, shining, almost of its own accord, in a moment."
Soul
"The law of improvement: I can't think of anyone who has said: - I want to be meaner than you are."
Soul
"Schopenhauer knew of a celestial force on earth, but he did not know what it was. He called it Wille. But Wille is the soul, the soul in animals, in grass, in wood, in stone."
Soul
"Two statements. - Wow! life is good! - Wow! life is hateful! Not a declaration of two different souls, but of two different digestions."
Soul
"The most mysterious page in the history of the world, the story of the Babel confusion. In the form of a hundred words of short fiction, it is the great true story of the greatest storm of mankind, which surely did not take place on this Earth, but in the Highlands. In the world of souls. What a celestial war it must have been, where the hurricane, instead of dust, swept myriads of souls into the worldspace!"
Soul
"Who is stronger? The one who puts all his muscles and strength into the hustle and bustle of life, and fights and struggles with fire and sweat? Or he who shrugs at all - at the world and its strugglers?"
Soul
"It's interesting: how much people covet rank, titles, insignia, the upper echelons of class, but what is higher than all these, spiritual perfection, they would not buy not in a shop, nor for pennies."
Soul
"If man: the universe in small, then the universe: man in large. The body is matter, the soul is God. The stars are the cells of the universe. - But what then is man? - He is what the dewdrop is: a round whole particle of the sea, far away."
Soul
"The greatest journey on Earth was made by the one who could go furthest from his own animal nature."
Soul
"Just as man's body contains all the animals and all the elements of the earth, so does it contain all the human beings. And all sin, all morality. Only as in the grass one thread is longer and another shorter, so in our souls the sins and the morals differ in their threads. This is the reason why the writer understands all sins and all morals and reproduces them in his works, and why the actor, when he illustrates a work of writing, can reproduce the characters in it."
Soul
"The soul is nothing but the functioning of the brain. - So the trumpeting is nothing but the functioning of the trumpet, - without the trumpeter."
Soul
"If our house catches fire, we take out our pearls, our gold. The rest is just junk anyway. When our body dies, the soul takes its most precious possessions with it to the new body."
Soul
"The contagious patient may feel that however much the disease has invaded his body, his spirit remains intact. However, a patient with a spiritual contagion may be physically healthy until death."
Soul
"Prosperity connects our souls to Earth. Suffering loosens the socket. The suffering man feels that this earthly world is not his true home. The soul is moved, - the troubled animal in its burrow, - and feels separate."
Soul
"The villain is locked up to restrict its movement. We lock ourselves in when we have a cold, so that the outside air does not harm us. Is not the clothing of man in the flesh to remove the soul-man from the movement in the world, either voluntarily or by necessity? The wing of free will is clipped: the stork spends the winter in a courtyard."
Soul
"Some scientists say that spiritually you grow like a coral. The five senses build its various ramifications. When soul-science will search with a brighter lamp, it will find that the character of the soul brings the main branches ready. The five senses do not build, they only fill."
Soul
"When will the Self awaken? When does man feel that he is a soul? Only at a mature age. Only in the quake of the inner world. The quake comes sometimes slowly, like a storm cloud, sometimes suddenly, like a bolt of lightning. It shocks you. And then our skies clear. Storms, lightning strikes, are mostly bodily misfortunes: wounds that feel fatal, maiming, contagion, - all the perils of our bodies that measure flesh in reflection and cry out: - Is this what you are? Are you flesh and bone? And then the spirit is moved within us: and our eyes are opened. - No."
Soul
"The body does not develop beyond 25 years. The soul is still developing at 60-70 years. The old age of the soul begins to show when the body is so paralysed that the brain is atrophied and the circulation of the blood is slowed down. But just because the glass of the photographer's camera is cloudy, the photographer is not. He'll get a new camera and a new glass."
Soul
"If life on earth were all our lives, then why should we spend a third or a quarter of our lives growing? But if life on earth is not the life, then it is understandable that 70-80 years are not enough to educate a soul. We must continue to learn in other classes. We transfer the strengths gained in the graduated class to a new class. We seek a wider and wider location for the roots for further development. A new land, a new milieu, new absorptions are necessary to further our spiritual muscularization, enlightenment, perfection, and to carry the fruits of our earthly life into another life. The Creator has shown, after all, in other bodies that they can develop in a short time if He wills: the horse reaches maturity after two years. The dog has enough for one year. A hen has enough for six months. The ostrich, as soon as it hatches from the egg, runs so fast that no man can catch it. It would be an imperfection of nature that man should have to grow for 20 years. It is not the body that needs such a long gestation, but the soul."
Soul
"We don't even need to be gardeners, we know that rose seeds grow into roses, melon seeds into melons, it's just a matter of choosing the right soil. Can not souls waiting to be reborn in the next world tell the future of our children, if they will? He who needs the degree to become a priest will not incarnate in a family whose children inherit a business. And he, for example, who has lived a slothful life, will need a busy life in the future to perfect himself, will not be born into a family in which it is said, 'Well, if we have a son, we will raise him to be a priest. He who has been haughty will seek a place where he is forced to humility. He who has been brutally humble will go to a family of archdukes. He who has been quarrelsome, will undertake endurance and suffering. He who was voracious will dress himself in rags. He who was a fornicator will take a vow of chastity. Every soul will find a place and a family suited to its development and qualities. Every soul chooses the soil where it can grow from the influences of childhood and youth into a new tree, rich in leaves. Climbing mountains seems a physical folly. Yet our life is always a climb. Jesus is still standing on the mountain today. Jesus is perfection. Everyone can know what level of perfection he or she or someone else is at. The more you understand Jesus, the more perfect you are. In the beginning, everyone is blind to him. All of a sudden his eyes become clear. Suddenly he stares. Once you start following him. We are all around the mountain. We all have to get up the mountain at some point."
Soul
"That our spiritual possessions are not lost is also evident from the fact that death takes from us people who are only at the beginning of their bright careers. We lose them, but they are not lost, they have just been transplanted by the Gardener to another land. How quickly Franz Liszt learns to play the piano. Because he knows before he ever saw a piano. At the age of twenty, Petőfi already knows all the secrets of poetry that theory only fathomed with much investigation many years after his death."
Soul
"There is no equal rank in nature. One soul is superior to another. Two strangers meet: as soon as they have exchanged words, they feel which is above. In times of danger, the weaker will follow the other, obey. This is also the secret of education. A paragraph of the universal law: the rule of the more perfect soul over the less perfect, so that it may be guided to the perfect path."
Soul
"Man from the sky. The crowd understands. They see him, though he wears no star on his forehead, and his body is no different from others. But from the moment his earthly maturation is complete, they listen to his word as a declaration of a spirit from above."
Death
"I'm getting buried. The people go weeping after the coffin. Weeping, they look into the pit. Look not there, but up to the sky. The body is an abomination. It's only beautiful and lovely as long as the force of preservation keeps a coloured glass before our eyes. In reality, there is nothing to love. The soul must be glad to get rid of it, and stare at people weeping over it as if it were some misfortune. What is man when he has no body? The weakness of our minds cannot but imagine him as he was. But why do we need legs in the other world? Legs are nothing more than a means of supporting the body. It has a hard bone in the middle to keep it from collapsing; it has fibres and threads on the bone to make it bend and stretch. What do we need this in the aether, where there is no dust, and where we carry no burden. And what need have we of the hand, of this grasping tool? What would we need for the stomach, this meat generator, when we have no meat there. What need would we have for those two photographic lenses inserted in our skulls, when we can see without any means. We don't need any part of the body. We cannot imagine ourselves without forms. We also paint God in a material body with beards. To angels we give feathered wings, from the length of which the ornithologist can calculate: which one weighs how many kilos. But the shapes are certainly different in the aether. The body is the form that corresponds to life on earth. If we had to live in water, we would have a different shape. The billions of different animals show that every soil and every way of life requires a different form. Lift your head from your petty business and see: what a marvelous work every body on earth is! The mosquito's body is very different from the human body, but it can walk, digest and breathe. Look at the rotifers. It has only one leg. If it had more legs, it wouldn't be able to do anything. And the rotifer lives, works, walks, digests, breathes, sees, reproduces. Look at the jellyfish. It doesn't have any legs. And if your soul were a jellyfish today, you'd say: - I am alive. I have food to eat. I love. I have children. The sea is the place for me. Blessed be the Creator. Well, if we see the possibility of life in so many shapes and forms in this place shackled to the earth, why do we need to carry this heavy, delicate and unfit body of ours up to the other world?"
Death
"The path of life is a path of visible order. Sun, moon, star shine on it. By its side grows flowers and bread. Watered by heavenly clouds, and the blood of martyrs. Such a road cannot be made to end in a pit."
Death
"They used to say: - May God give you everything you wish for yourself! This seems like a good wish. In reality, it is a curse."
Death
"What kind of a cheap word is that: mortal? Man is not mortal. Only his body is mortal. Priests should not be allowed to pronounce that word!"
Death
"Our sense of eternity in all our ages... We only see the world as changing, as ephemeral. We ourselves seem to be part-owners of eternity, only somehow placed here as souls from the world of eternity... If we never looked in a mirror, we would assume that we are not changing physically, but just weakening. Spiritually, we always feel a strengthening, a brightening, never ageing."
Death
"What is eternity? For the peasant, the stone house. To the Egyptian king, the pyramid. For the Latin poet, the poem. To the Hungarian lord, the fee tail. But nothing is eternal in this hemisphere, but the one transience."
Death
"The ephemeral only needs ephemera. Nature is not wasteful. Each animal can only do what it needs to maintain and reproduce its body. What a lot man knows that has nothing to do with the body! The soul also gathers. For the whole of life is nothing else but the gathering of the soul. We gather understanding and experience, feelings and morals. Are we collecting for the grave? Was man made to collect for a pit?"
Death
"Epictetus speaks: - Death is nothing. It is only the images associated with it that make you sad. The mourner: - But when those very images are my treasure lost in the earth!"
Death
"- I know that when I die I will cease to be! - Have you tried? - There is no God in heaven! - Have you been above the stars?"
Death
"Most people think of death as annihilation because they see that everything that lives in nature dies: the grass, the tree, the beetle, the animal. - But you only see the body die, man!"
Death
"Among the main laws of nature is the law of continuous transformation. In the living world this is striking. The ovum that becomes a caterpillar, the caterpillar that molts four times and becomes more and more perfect in shape. Does not the human soul also molt? After great sufferings we feel that we have one less crust on our soul. And the last shedding? That's the death that takes wings."
Death
"The human body is a mud sculpture with two bellows, constantly animating itself. It is impossible not to recognize that it is a dwelling: a house of the soul. If the two blowers disappear, the rivers, streams, and streams of the human body freeze. Then the soul moves out of it and seeks another house."
Death
"In some people, the soul sleeps like a bear. Even more deeply, because it is always asleep. It is awakened by nothing but the occasional thunderbolt of death. Then he gazes around, bewildered and horror-stricken. And... soon he falls asleep again."
Death
"In most obituaries, instead of saying that on this or that day he died, it should say: - ...on this or that day, he lived to see the happiest day of his life."
Death
"Two thousand years blink out of your eyes. But in the depths of your soul, the star of eternity itself slumbers. You are an animal until you realize that you are a child of God, one with the Father, and you must return, you Prodigal son!"
Death
"If we could be sure on 1 January that we would die on 31 December... How different our thinking, our work, the way we carry ourselves would be. How much excitement we would know to be useless! How many more people we would look at with more love! How grateful we would be for just one nice sunny day! For a good burrow! For a plate of food! How uninterested we'd be in reading politics, stock exchanges, and public statements. What interest we'd have in watching a lot of holidaying, bustling, hammer and mallet, envious spittle and sweaty rage, bludgeon, badge, pink letter and silk ties. Money reading and land registry tables. And so on. But you have to know the expiry date."
Death
"The mill wheel is driven by water. But what drives our wheel that we want to live, to live forever? And to stop, to pass away, never! ?What is it that grinds our heads, that we so esteem its grind and grindings? Only hopes and hopes, one hope, two hopes, many hopes, all beautiful hopes. But all hopes are but images. And not a real picture: a spiritual mirage. If we come to it, we come to a desert, a rock, a swamp, as we have left it for. But from there, we see a new and beautiful picture, and, disappointed a thousand times, we hurry to it again, and hurry with all our lives, until we fall into the 6 ft. hole."
Death
"The animal, and the child of the animal degree, and the people of the child degree, do not adjust their walk to the hour of death. They have a sense of the eternity of life. Those who revolve in battle are not afraid of bullets: each feels that he will not be hit, only the other. Because, of course, you cannot feel the other's sense of eternal life, only your own. The thought of death, known as the end of life, is the birth of thinking, the thinking that still thinks that only what we see with our bodily eyes is real."
Spiritism
"Many people in Hungary are engaged in soul evocation. I myself have participated in thirty or forty such sessions. It happened that the souls also wrote names: Napoleon, Zrinyi, Mátyás, Wesselényi, Deák and other famous names. Each name is a different writing. Some knew one, others another. Someone in the company speaks: - "Géza, ask for a writing too! I asked my father if they could summon. - Yes. - If so, please write down his name. The medium (a charming twelve year old girl) turns her face towards me and asks what was my father's name? I tell her. The medium's hand writes it down with its usual nervous tremor: Alexander Czigler. The company looks at me questioningly. I just answer, looking at the paper: - Father, this is not your writing. The medium's hand is on the paper again. The letters are different, the end line is different, but the letters are not my father's round, strong letters and the underline is not my father's. - 'Father,' I say again, 'you never wrote your name in cz. The medium writes the name like this for the third time: Zigler. - "No it isn't," I say. "My father spelled his name Ziegler. And his spelling was like no one else's. The psychic then put his finger on the money. The Apostle John wishes to speak. The apostle said: - "To him that is unbelieving, souls never give evidence. And that was the end of the meeting. From the New Year's Day of this year, when I first attended the meetings of the soul summoners (1894), there was never any question as to whether I was a believer or not. For I am a man of few words, and when questions arose in my soul, I kept silent. I preferred to be a spectator rather than a questioner. From the first session onwards, the souls always said that they knew our thoughts. But they were never struck by my doubts in thought. Faith, earnest faith in their existence, that's what it takes, they always said. And if sometimes they only wanted to make a statement to those of undoubted faith, I was always named so that I could be present. The rest then retired to other rooms, and the answers of the souls were kept secret. This was the case, for example, when I asked them to shed light on the anonymous notary of King Béla. Answer: - He was an expelled monk. They also told me his name: - Innocent. This name did not correspond to any of the names the historians had found out. The spirits spoke in every language the party could understand. We got answers in Latin, English, French, German and Italian. But once Béla Tóth came to the summoning session. And he asked questions in Turkish. Not only did the Turkish souls not respond, but other people did not respond either. The opinion of the company was that Béla Tóth was a sceptic. In the meetings I attended, I never heard any certainty from the spirits. There was no sign or revelation, only vague or ambiguous answers, mostly childish, sometimes rude; - that was all. And yet I do not laugh at spiritism. So many men of excellent minds believe in it, that I must think I was only unfortunate enough. The things I read and hear make me think. I am not talking about America or England, where millions are already engaged in conversations with departed souls. The Vay family is closer, they live among us. A Baroness Vay receives answers from them in a living voice, and they appear to her. Then there is a engineer of European name, Zipernovszky. He also communicates with them without a medium. They give him answers on a table with letters on it, without him having to move money from letter to letter. I'm sorry, but I don't know either of them. If true, it's a big deal. A single word, a certainty of the other world, would be a greater event than anything the world has ever seen; it would turn the whole world upside down: the guns would fall and a new social order would emerge on the basis of universal brotherhood. But souls are secretive."
Spiritism
"Three questions for the Dear Souls. There must now be some one or two thousand summoners in Hungary. Some are lucky enough to receive answers from the other world. I only wanted answers to three questions. But these three questions I always dared to ask only in my mind, and I did not get only a vague and imperfect answer to the first one. And this answer was written by no less a personage than Titus Tóvölgyi, the most authentic interpreter of souls. I. First question. The question of suffering. Why does man suffer on Earth? You can take comfort in not knowing where you came from, where you are and where you are going. Good: let the veil of God cover these secrets. But when a man sees that he begins with weeping and ends with weeping; that his whole life is an unbroken chain of sufferings, then the why? cries to heaven even from the most religious soul. The spirits dictate to the spiritist believer that suffering is the punishment of a previous life, and that the soul either undertakes to incarnate itself on earth or is compelled to do so by the powers that rule in the spirit world. However, it is also said that some live their first lives here, sparks from the Eternal, the souls say, from this central self-conscious lighthouse of the world. Do they not go through the agonies of conception, the long series of childhood diseases, and a life of all human suffering? Even if they are born into a family that is poverty-stricken or where children are raised with a stick? What if they have lived through wars, years of inhumanity, epidemics, or misfortunes such as those that abound in the diaries of the rescue services? But let us only talk of those who in a former life deserved to be punished by experiencing another life. Is it conceivable that all those who were set on fire by Nero, wrapped in pitch, trodden on by Atilla, dragged off to be slaves by the Tartars and Turks, crippled and blinded by war, all deserved this terrible torment for their sins, and that God then wrote those hundred thousand beggars and hundred thousand dead on the tablets of his justice? Who has read the history of America in the time of El Dorado? Who has read the things of the Spanish Inquisition? The documents of the trial of Elizabeth Báthory? Witch executions? The interrogations of Caraffa of Prešov? and the earthquake of Lisbon, which in one day gave sixty thousand souls back to heaven, and left perhaps as many orphans and beggars on earth. Where is absolute Goodness and Truth? asks the trembling heart, when, hearing, reading, and seeing these things, it looks to heaven. I am not a God-denier. I see the world as a creation and not an accident. It is only when there come from the other world statements which seem to the touchstone of the human mind to be brass instead of gold, that we desire proof, illumination, to accompany the statements, so that our souls may not be confused. For of the doctrine of reincarnation, those who have hitherto taught us divine things know nothing. This doctrine, being new in all religions, except the Swedenborgian denomination, and the statement of men not of this world, is shown to be more authentic than all other doctrines. Our intellect cannot accept this explanation of the sufferings with stupid immobility. The question arises in us involuntarily, whether it is identical with the concept of Truth? Is it compatible with our life being the punishment of one or more previous lives, without knowing the sins committed, the cause of our sufferings? Can we set improvement as the goal of our lives if we do not know why and in what we must improve? Can we continue to weave or correct the thread that the supreme power has judged to be wrong, if we do not know where and when we have gone wrong? Can a mason continue to build a building if the bottom is said to be faulty and he does not know what the top should be because he does not know the design? If I was born a cripple, and know not why I must bear the hatred of all, and a sorrow greater than all, can I bear my cross with peace, when my conscience says: - You are innocently condemned to this punishment! No. The explanation of suffering as given by souls rebels against God. It is the duty of souls to give reassuring light to it, for it cannot be their aim that man should misunderstand God and regard him as evil. II. Second question. According to the souls who have spoken to us, faith is the basis for survival beyond the grave. Religion is all the same, you just have to believe. In addition to this, the spiritualist must also believe that real otherworldly spirits are talking to him, otherwise any approach to them will fail. So what is faith? It is a gift from God, explains the religion I took up when I was a day old, and whose teachings I therefore know best. And so it continues to explain: - The virtue poured into us by God, by which we hold as true all that the patriarchs, prophets, Jesus and the apostles taught us, as well as those things which God declares to us through his Mother Church, that we may believe. Well, if faith is a gift from God, then if I believe, I have no merit, just luck. If I don't believe, it's not my fault, just my misfortune. Accordingly, the Roman Church's statement that "Faith is indispensable to salvation" - can be derived from God. One can be true. Both are not. The Church calls only faith a gift; neither life, nor the sun, nor bread, nor anything that is our common good, but faith. By this it says that faith is not a general gift of God: let him who has it rejoice, for his is the kingdom of heaven; he who has not, may know already here on earth what fate awaits him after the bell. When one reflects on this doctrine, he sees eternal Truth set before him like an old man, worried in his mind, giving gifts to children. Has the child bathed? He gets more. Has the child not had a bath? He gets nothing. And the concept of Eternal Goodness? Can we reconcile with it that the capacity to call is not born with us, like the senses, love, goodness, but is given to us separately, like a hat-lining, so that we can welcome the giver in due time. Perhaps the Church itself recognises that this dogma smells of earth. It points to the words of Scripture: 'He who believes will be saved, he who does not believe will be damned'. A terrible statement. Christ said. And the church puts it above all its dogmas, and begins all its teaching with it. But if faith is not from me, can it be claimed from me? Is it up to me, if I do not believe, am I damned? Is it my merit if I enter salvation? But let us think without the head of the church. Let us say, that faith is the seed of goodness, and of merit unto salvation, which is in my will. Let us say that faith is the acceptance, the holding to be true, of some notion, view, or assertion from another. For me to accept the conception, view, or assertion of another, it is necessary either that it should be in some way connected with my conception, and be capable of being incorporated into my thought, or that I should hold his conception to be more perfect than mine, and that he should say what he will, and I should nod my assent to it. In the first case, in weighing up my merits, it falls into the balance of how I have been brought up by home, by life, by school, and whether chance brings me together with the word of someone who should resonate in my soul. The second case also brings me to faith not of my own merit and separates me from it not of my own guilt if I do not accept it. This is purely a matter of weakness of brain, and therefore a carnal matter. For if my intellect is dark, it respects the firefly as the sun. And if it is clear: you do not need to accept every blue-green ray. Well, whose intellect is so formed as to accept nothing just because someone says so? Our understanding, after all, evolves like the coral of the sea. It is built every day by our five senses and guided every day by the waves of our thought. Which branches will be the most muscular, and whether they will point to the right or to the left, or straight to the sky, we cannot determine for ourselves. There is no saint who could not have been a robber-murderer, if his upbringing had moulded his character to that end. Nor is there a man of the gallows who would not be a saint, if his tree of life had grown in a soil and climate suited to it. Let us not speak of blind faith. If all the good souls of the world who have moved away flock to my desk and tell me that I can only be saved if I believe that I write not with ink but with wine from Tokaj, I must be damned. The more childlike a man is, the more he is willing to believe anything. The more mature the mind, the more he is inclined to consider and examine everything before accepting it. The child-man, and the people with child-intelligence, - one. They believe all tales. The mature-minded multitude, however, requires a logical basis for every assertion. In the order of the world, reason rules. Reason cannot come from nothing. The world is therefore a creation: the expression of some intelligent creative power. This is faith. But it is also mathematics. It is not merit. Adam was forbidden by God to eat of the apple. Adam and Eve ate. For this God condemned mankind to a life of suffering and death. That's also faith, to believe that. Why this merit is greater than that, I cannot understand. The human brain is like a photographic machine. Whatever images the sensitive plates record in it, that's what makes up its knowledge. If his surroundings are evil, his soul is filled with images of evil, his will is evil, his knowledge is evil, his world view is black. How can he become a man surrounded by saints and angels? Tell him to believe! But who is the man to believe. Jesus? Buddha? Jesus says: There is a God: love him! For man's way is heavenly salvation. Buddha says: There may be a God. If there is, he is mortal. Man's goal is nirvana. And both say that he is the truth. What do souls say about religions, when they come to them for advice? It is said that no religion is the truth, but all religions are close to the truth. No matter which religion a man is a believer in, he should believe what the religion teaches. But here is Gautama the Buddha teaching that you don't need faith for salvation. Gautama the Buddha has 450 million followers, Jesus has only 240 million. Well, if the majority of Buddhas believe that they don't need faith, if their faith is unbelief, what do their souls advise them? But we have nothing to do with Buddha. Our faith is the Roman faith. We must accept what it dictates. Now, if I decide to believe what I have not believed, am I a believer? Am I worthy of eternal reward? No. I cannot do violence to my soul. 2 times 2 will not ne six, even if I say that I will lay down all my understanding as a sacrifice on the altar of the Lord. In vain do I deceive myself, in vain do I suggest to myself the number which authority has set before me, or say against it, or accept it with a mad brain. Why then do you, good souls who are in touch with us, tell us to believe? Why do you urge me to do so, when faith is a gift, and a man cannot get it of his own will. III. Third question. The French soul summoner Allan Kardec received answers from souls to 1019 questions. I could not believe any of them, for I did not know him, and I did not witness that the answers were indeed given by souls. But I cannot say that the book is a lie, for I have no proof of that either. I read it with much delight, and find all its statements possible. I do not even say that the points of the new incarnation are impossible, although the spiritualists have abandoned them. They said: - If a man can be reborn on earth after death, he can again be the child of his own son, and the grandmother the grandchild of her grandson, or even his wife, and thus man's most beautiful emotions and most sacred earthly relations are intermingled in the other world. Souls have since made up for the missing link in Kardec's philosophy. They said: - Reincarnation can never happen soon after death, but only centuries later. Well, I say, I think all this is possible, and if I were an illiterate peasant, and somebody read this philosophy to me, I would swear by it that it is holy truth. But what I see in this philosophy is an even greater emptiness, and to which I have not yet received an answer from the venerable souls: the question, why do souls talk to us? Either because it is ordained by the author of the laws of nature that man should remain in obscurity as to the other world, and then it is a crime against prohibition for them to report, a sin for some living men to gossip about the world of the dead. Or else: it is ordained of the Lord of all that we should all have a share in the knowledge of secrets, and then it is a sin not to give public revelation and evidence. And how do we explain that the deceased mother does not come to the aid of the cries and screams of a starving, destitute, burning, attacked by a wild animal or subjected to brutality, but is happy to appear after tea in the drawing-room and push furniture, lift tables, dodonize, ring bells, play music, plaster her feet and perform other stunts for the so-called believers. And if only ordinary souls would do this! Homer, Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Kant, Petőfi, Viktor Hugo, Lajos Kossuth, the bright legions of saints, the apostles, evangelists, popes, kings, sages, and other men of great intellect, are all serious men in their lives. They hold no torch to the mind that searches the mysteries of existence. They do not help to clarify the intricacies of history. They give no prescriptions for incurable diseases. They do not unchain the innocently convicted. They have no words to alleviate human misery: they do not comfort the desperate at the coffin... but when a group of believers gather somewhere, they readily lift the table, play the guitar, write, phosphoresce and unveil the maps and state secrets of the afterlife."
Spiritism
"I repeat, I do not doubt that souls in contact with us exist, because I consider everything possible that is not proven to be impossible. I only want an answer to these three questions. Titus Tóvölgyi's answer.* Although the three questions addressed are not addressed to man, but to souls, and although I am not only a soul, but also a man, who (according to the doctrine of spiritualism) has a soul, allow me, as a fully convinced adherent of spiritualism and spiritualism, to stand in line against the challenger. Nor did Gárdonyi make it clear whether he was addressing his three questions to souls who, freed from their bodily prisons, were already enjoying freedom in the afterlife, or whether he would accept the answer of a soul who, still carrying its earthly prison, was struggling with the hard work of penance. I, therefore, following the prompting of my soul, enter the line, though I am engaged in a combat with an adversary whom it is difficult to convince with the weapons of capacity, because he has no idea of the object of which he is the enemy (though a very real enemy); but it is certain that he is not alone, and that spiritualists are surrounded by a veritable sea of enemies of this conception. (Is he who asks for light called an enemy by the spirits?) We are enemies, but not from conviction, only from supposition, and that supposition is that what we assert cannot be true, and that our evidence is inadmissible. We are criticized, laughed at, and considered a little foolish, who are above blinkeredness, because we have no wit not to take the irrefutable facts of reality for blinkeredness. What is said about the so-called "séance", I subscribe to most of it, because the amount of deception that is mentioned here is perhaps not even to be found among the Vlach gypsies. It is true that we are still at the beginning in Hungary and that no mediums have yet been developed which could prove authentic, irrefutable facts, but there are as many mediums as there are experimenting families, each of which has an Árpád, King Matthias, Ovidius, Rákóci or Kossuth etc., which makes spiritualism an object of ridicule in an easily graspable way. The doctrine of spiritualism does not consist in summoning souls and dancing tables, but in the more sacred morality which it contains, and which is supported by spiritual phenomena, but not at all by the gossip which they spread about us, and which they serve to raise the veil of our earthly affairs or our future successes, good or bad. But let us come to the point! What is the first question? I. The "first question" is the question of suffering. Why does man suffer on this earth? It is to desire happiness by tasting the kiss of the angel of happiness, which is not present at any moment. (That is, to long for happiness. I am reminded of the shepherd who beats his dog in order to make it happy - when he lets go. The souls' philosophy of life is thus the same as the shepherd's, except that they express themselves poetically.) But that happiness is only a taste of salvation and is not to be found on this earth. Let it be the eternal longing and yearning of a soul bound to the frailties of the flesh and animal instincts; let it chase, pursue, run after it through thorn and bush, shed sweat, feel the prick of thorns in the paths, let it be tormented by desire as thirst to reach the spring that waits for it on the borders of life's deserts and sufferings, with the soft velvet of grassy turf, the soft caress of the flower-scented fingers of cool, dewy breezes; but the cost of accessing that spring is: "'Do not do to your neighbour what you would not wish for yourself'. This earth is the station of spiritual perfection and purification; the garden, the hotbed of the soul's development, which, from geology to psychology, is passed through all the phases of life's variations as through as many filters and retorts, so that when it becomes man it may occupy this place as worthily as possible. It is in this place that he continues his purification through the blackmailers of sufferings and trials. He must know the difference between right and wrong, and, as a tried and tested fighter of struggles, he must be able to be used where he is needed. (But if the soul springs from God, from what does it purify itself? Why should suffering wash that which comes from a place so pure that no macula can be in it? Does the soul of an infant grow from toothache and belly-ache? He who has seen a child choking for days on end with diphtheria cannot accept that the development of the soul should begin in such a 'hot-bed' as this our land. Who is to say what is right and what is wrong? There can be neither good nor evil in the face of perfection. In my article, I explained that if I am good, circumstances have instilled in me the notion of moral goodness and thus I do not deserve it. And if I am bad, for that very reason I am not guilty. Conscience has instilled in me a light of uncertain colour. The wisest papua cooks his enemy's thigh with a calm soul, his conscience does not protest against it. But there must be enough immoral European men who will not kill a fly, because their conscience says: I must not cause suffering even to the animal!) And that in this earthly furnace of perfection and purification, a short human life is not enough in comparison with eternity, is understandable. How many incarnations are necessary from the phase of becoming human to the phase of humanly possible perfection? That is not predetermined. I didn't suck these from my thumb. Spiritualism is a science. I cannot go into further explanation of things here. I recommend for reading the works of spiritualist scholars who refer to the facts of Aksakov, Hellenbach, Du Prel, Friese, Devis, Zöllner, Vallace, Brofferio, etc. One hundred drops of bitterness, one drop of happiness: this is the normal state of human life; to be at peace in this is social wisdom. (I don't want such a drink. Nor such wisdom.) For calm alone is the balm that makes suffering easier to bear. The tranquillity which, by excluding these drugs of self-torture, takes out the poisonous fangs of suffering, and the soul, being placed in its situation, does not vomit, does not fidget, and may even enjoy comfort. (If the Minorite doctor of Eger were to explain this to the toothache sufferers waiting for him on the porch, would they not reply: - It is true, dear reverend, but just pull out the bad bone. Go to the hospital when they operate, and explain the comfort of suffering to the screaming patients.) What kind of family is one born into? Is it a question of living as a human being first? Or is he reincarnated for reward or punishment? (The Szapáry who drew the plough must surely have been reincarnated as a reward. Souls born into royalty undoubtedly gain the greatest reward through reincarnation. What does the history of the world say? The blown up Tsar? The German emperor who died of laryngeal cancer? The Habsburg of Mexico? The Habsburg girl burnt alive? János Orth? Rudolf?) The first life is like a lineup, who gets what turn. What life then awaits him, or what life does he make himself worthy of? That depends on many different influences, and is judged according to them. Time of war! Plague! Misfortune! These are extraordinary conditions. War is the act of human free will, the course of the conflicts of earthly life, and not the fruit of a higher will. Let men therefore reckon with this. Epidemics are also mostly health symptoms. (Thousands and thousands of widows and orphans: after the Indian plague, don't ask God crying, you are only victims of a health symptom!) The advanced humanity of Europe and America can now localise epidemics, can control them. Japan is already following in Europe's footsteps. Why can't China, India, Persia, and the rest! The way is open for them. And if progress were not promoted by means of coercion sometimes from a higher place, if there were not sometimes storms to shake mankind out of its lethargy and thundering out of laziness, would we not be where the other underdeveloped nations of the world are? And death by pestilence is more a means of stirring up the strength of the living than of punishing the dead, for death is no punishment at all. (On this point, it would be well to ask the souls who have been wheeled, skinned alive and impaled by Caraffa.) If death is a punishment, then so is release from prison, which we don't consider it to be, do we? And if death comes to a man before his old age, to whom it comes, it is amnesty. Some misfortunes if they occur? See, they are mostly the outgrowth of man's own causation, the consequences of his carelessness, or of his want of integrity; and if they do not? Human prudence and caution would fail, in other words, human vigilance would fail. (The Reformed priests who were dragged to the galleys, who had iron pears forced into their mouths to stop them from screaming, and who either went mad or died as a result of these bloodcurdling atrocities, could have been more careful! This is a particularly reassuring explanation for the victims of tram transport in Budapest.) The creation can account for all the facts, but people, while on the one hand are lazy to think about it, on the other hand would go so far with their demands that God should take care of everything for them and God should do everything for them. (No one wishes that, since it can be understood from what has been said that suffering is desirable for everything, because it purifies.) God would only have to show a little willingness to do so, and even his divine power would not be able to satisfy the demands of men. What about Nero's cruelties, Atilla's treacherous campaign, the Turkish Tartars' chaining and torture of Erzsébet Báthory's and Caraffa's? God has given man free will, and though there are sometimes miracles in life, that a man may be arrested in the commission of his sins, that miracle is a momentary flash of the sword of the Lord, like a lightning stroke, but in general each man is responsible for his own actions; and if the Lord should arrest every man in his own actions when he is about to do evil? What would be the merit of free will, what would be the merit of doing good, if evil were excluded, made impossible? (But it is not that Nero is responsible for his own actions, but that the venerable souls who willingly perform acrobatic feats for the spiritual edification of well-fed summoners are not defending the innocent who are wrapped in tar-torches or thrown to tigers. Let any man imagine himself in the circus, and the famishing beast opposite him, and let him answer for me the spiritualist theory, whether he will be at rest in it.) Is the punishment of the wicked no more forgotten by heaven than the compensation of the innocent sufferer; and if proved wickedness be punished even on earth, and the noble and good endeavour find recognition even here? How can it not find it where God is the punisher and the rewarder? (I do not wish to punish anybody, only that I may not be punished! What is it to the thirteen martyrs of Arad and their families that Haynau is punished in heaven?) But he who examines everything through his earthly spectacles, and makes the limits of life, punishment and reward, complete at the grave... (I didn't claim anything, I just asked.) ...It is natural that there should be no justice, for the justice which men deliver on this earth leaves much to be desired. He, therefore, who does not believe in the other world, who denies the immortality of the soul, (To deny is to say that something known to be true is not true. The immortality of the soul I consider possible, I really do not know. This is not a denial, but a perception.) ...sees an unfinished half-work before him, which breaks off at the very point where its logical continuation would be most desirable, where all that has not been completed on this earth should follow. Now the doctrine of spiritualism, which is now being practised as a serious science by great minds and scientists, follows this logic with the help of celestial revelations, and has already evidence which irrefutably confirms it: That creation is not aimless and not an unconscious half-work; that God is not a striking labourer who stops his work in the middle; and that, though human reason be finite, though the eye and the earth's limit be found, though our gaze see no further than the grave, yet the universe is infinite and is contained in a system, in which there is no interruption, but there is a goal towards which the world of atoms is directed and strives. (I have yet to see a spark of heavenly revelation in what has been said. The heavenly revelation must come to us in the form of an indisputable truth. It must not show copper instead of gold. So where is the evidence? After all, mankind has been waiting for thousands of years! How cruel of you, Mr. Tóvolgyi, not to produce those proofs.) And can we improve if we do not know the conditions for improvement? Of course we do! Even the most depraved man knows! The conscience of man has such a delicate sense that once we have become conscious, it vibrates, it moves, but we find its vibration and movement very uncomfortable in many respects and do not want to notice it; but when it is too late, when it has rebelled against us and become our torment, we do notice it. But let us notice it first. Observe its vibrations, its movements, apply yourself to it before you do something, and it has such subtle sensory nuances that it will give you a correct answer to everything. But don't mute or ignore his advice, for it is certain that he will be silent before terrorism, until the matter is finally resolved. (I have already answered the question of conscience.) II. Question two: ""What is faith?"" I think we can end this question more briefly. Faith is an extract of conviction. I can believe only what my conviction takes for certain and suggests. Without it, all belief is pretended and false. If I am not convinced of the certainty or thoroughness of something? Power and violence may force me to confess, but cannot force me to believe; and if belief is made strong in me by conviction, can power and violence force me to deny, but cannot force me not to believe. (For I say almost word for word the same thing.) What does the catholic mother church hold and what does she say? That is her business. But do I believe? It is mine. I do not agree with the schoolboy who, when asked by the catechist, ""How must a Christian Catholic believe to be saved?"" instead of saying: ""To be saved, a Christian Catholic must believe what the Christian Catholic Mother Church puts before him, whether it is written or not"". Instead, out of error or confusion, he replied, ""whether they are true or not"". The doctrine of Spiritualism does not demand of anyone to believe without conviction; on the contrary, theosophy differs in that it seeks to produce facts, to convince unbelief with facts, and thus to build faith on a foundation of conviction. (But where? when? how? Because that is what I expect.) Spiritualism and the Mother Church, spiritualism and religion are related only in that they believe in God, but in other respects they are completely different. According to the doctrine of Spiritualism, religion is only a form and an honest well-meaning Mohammedan, Arian, or Baptist is necessarily more pleasing to God than an immoral, wicked Catholic and vice versa. Worship his God in whatever form he will, only seek to keep the purity of his soul from the filthiness of sin. Disbelief is not sin, but wrong doing is sin. Who, in spite of all his efforts, cannot be convinced of the existence of God? This does no harm, but if his unbelief leads him into a whirlpool of sin? He does harm, and will find his punishment. (The chapter on faith in the first answer says against this. How can I be punished if faith does not depend on me?) Faith is an amulet, a shield against sins, even for the most learned man, for faith is an antidote to sin, which human weakness will be tempted to commit by a thousand snares. (I did not say the contrary, I only said in the word of the Church that faith is a gift of God.) Strong faith also makes the soul strong and resistant to all the plagues of immorality. It makes him strong in patience, in perseverance, in charity, weak in hatred: for when he asks God to forgive him his sins, he thinks that he is called to forgive those who sin against him. Faith, therefore, is not a promissory note, the value of which, if I do not believe, is executed on me, but a protective palladium, a share in a company which is worth most when it is perfectly clean and has nothing written on it, and which may be the certificate of the members of that company. And though it is possible to enter through the gates of heaven without it, it is better to enter by it, because I can keep my soul more purely under its shield than if I were to fight with a naked soul in the midst of the struggles of life, mixed with all the dirt and trials of life. So faith is not indispensable, but it is necessary. It cannot be forced on any man, but let him who can obtain it do so, for in him he will find a companion on the journey of his life who will be a strong support and guide in the midst of his trials and missteps. III. Question three, On ""the appearance of souls"". What is reincarnation or rebirth for? I have given a cursory answer in Chapter I. At least I have answered it well enough to give the reader an idea. To thoroughly satisfy it?... Why? Who will believe it? That I could talk to someone about music, let alone higher music? At the very least, you should know sheet music. Spiritualism belongs to higher music. To understand and comprehend it, a little initiation is absolutely necessary, and that, even today, is hardly to be expected among the ranks of the reading public. So let us stick to the solution of that question: Is appearance a sin for souls? Or freedom dependent on their pleasure? Or is it a duty? Well, it is not a sin. It may be supposed that sinful souls, in whom it would not matter whether they were more or less sinful by a few sins, would appear, even if it were a sin, but pure souls, already under the grace of God, would not appear under any pretense, although such souls do appear, and, in answer to questions put to them, they have equally declared, in America, London, Paris, or Dusseldorf, that their appearance for the information of mankind is not only a freedom, but a duty. And to the question, ""How can it be explained that the deceased mother does not come to the aid of a starving, destitute, burning in fire, attacked by a wild beast, or subjected to brutality, but is happy to appear after tea in the drawing-rooms, and there to push furniture and lift tables for the so-called believers?"" etc., I reply: ""You are very much mistaken as to the possibility and purpose of the appearance of souls. In the first place, spirits are not earthly beings to interfere in earthly things, and indeed all earthly interference on their part is forbidden. (It has just been said that their appearance in America, London, Paris, etc., is a duty.) What if the spirits were to protect man from all danger, who would then fear danger? Who would then take care of himself? (So, the reason why the spirits do not come to the aid of children trapped in a burning house is that they do not take care of themselves!) How many would just jump out of the window, or into the Danube, or hide in the lion's den? And then this earthly peril is not so great a peril in the sight of heaven; (For the man on the gallows, this explanation may be a good consolation.) ...the greatest would be the deadly, and that would lead the earthly beloved into the arms of heaven. If parents were free to interfere, they would still more exhort their children, 'Jump, my son, into the Danube. ""Jump! Fear nothing. Here I am, and I'll hold you up with my arms. And that they appear in the salons pushing tables? Yes, where there is a medium, and where they can draw strength from the medium for this appearance, so their appearance does not depend on where the child is, but on where the medium is. (In the case of misfortunes, therefore, we should not then cry out: - Help! But rather: - Medium! Where is the medium?) Besides, they are not everywhere where they are supposed to be, and although it is true that sometimes, and most often, inferior spirits send their toys to the experimenters and appear instead of Homer, Shakespeare, Julius Caesar and Victor Hugo, it is even truer that sometimes no spirits appear. But I do not think that anyone, and indeed the great majority of people, would wish me to elaborate on this, for having tried their patience so much. But, as a true and zealous spiritualist, whose faith is based on conviction, and whether I am scolded, ridiculed, laughed at, or condemned to death, I still believe; I could not help taking up the gloves thrown to spiritualism by Géza Gárdonyi, and answering, though not to me, his questions, according to my best convictions. (In any case, I am indebted to you for your answer. For if they do not answer the three questions I have asked, they make it clear how much light philosophy has received from the spirits in heaven. Tóvölgyi is the most knowledgeable Hungarian spiritualist. He knows the whole spiritual literature. But for the spiritual salvation and enlightenment of the table-dancers, let him answer my three questions as an interpreter of souls. And also for your enlightenment, my sons.)"
Faith
"The astronomical observatory says it can only see the eight planets magnified. The other thousands of thousands of stars are only as big as they look to the naked eye when viewed through any telescope. It follows that they are all suns. What force holds them there in the desolate heights? And we still doubt that our life is not held by that HAND!"
Faith
"In the middle of the church, the perpetual flame is burning. In sunny weather the flame of the candle fades, almost disappears. But when the sky is overcast, when darkness falls on the church, the flame shines forth. In the heart of man there is also a holy everlasting flame: faith."
Faith
"If we were to have our own way in life, the first thing we would do would be to cast old age and death out of our destiny. And we would go on with life with still greater struggle, taking the trouble of accumulating and securing our wealth, and fussing over our fellow-men who stand in our way, and, with care after care, we would go on rapidly along the road which ends in suicide."
Faith
"What left-wing thinking: in a funeral oration, to make an effort to heap praise on the dead. I have never read a funeral oration that is in its entirety a farewell. What a soaring of thoughts is occasioned when prisoners bid farewell to those who are going to freedom! When those who remain in darkness bid farewell to those who go to God! How one can connect the ideas radiating into infinity with the pettiness of this earthly life. Such talk is both comforting and true."
Faith
"The vine tendrils are wonderful. How it spreads, how it gropes everywhere! How it twines itself on grass, wire, twigs! what knots it ties! The mindless vine! Even more wonderful is the ampelopsis that climbs up walls. Its sticky little fingers grow and cling to the smoothest wall. They cling so tightly that they can hardly be torn off. The silk thread-thin grasping fibres of the cobaea! How they penetrate every crevice, every crust! Whether thin or thick, to which it must cling, and whether round or square, the kobaea binds its life to it. If God did not give the unwise plant its grasping, clinging power without reason, does the tendrils, finger, chain, and thread of the human heart, stronger than all, bind the living to the departed without reason?"
Faith
"He who turns his mind towards God, senses, as a blind man feels the light of the sun."
Faith
"The faith according to the Catechism. In fact: to feel true, etc., what the Mother Church teaches. Because I can hold it even if I don't feel it to be true, but then I am lying. And if I hold to be true what I feel to be true, then I am honest. Is there no contradiction in this: 1. Faith is a gift from God. 2. He who does not believe will be damned. So if God does not give me a gift, I am damned: I suffer because I have no gift."
Faith
"Whenever I read a thought that speaks against God, I always feel the same as when I hear a false note in music."
Faith
"He who believes everything, - I suspect he is a fool. He who believes nothing but what his bodily eyes can see, - I no longer suspect..."
Faith
"Whether you are a theist or an atheist, it is illogical to use these words to bang the table: - That is right! Let's just say it right-quietly: - I believe so."
Faith
"Science is always tearing up a false banknote that we thought was true. It's hard for us. But we are soon consoled, because it gives us another false bill."
Faith
"To denigrate someone's religion is like going into someone's room and belittling the pictures on the wall."
Faith
"Atheist books... They horrify me, like the doormats on which it is written: God brought you. And the guest wipes his muddy feet in the holy name of God."
Faith
"Into the atheists album: Yet it is just strange that you say of the universe: - It exists. And to the one who created it, you say: - Does not exist."
Faith
"If we paint on paper the rivers of the terrestrial globe, and in the representation of the human body the veins: how very similar!"
Faith
"Ficus magnolioides. A tree with a beautiful stem form, from which the roots come down from above (including from the branches), and when they reach the ground they become new tree trunks. Human limb-like formations."
Religion
"The Vedanta religion is more logical when it says that suffering is a consequence than the Christian religion, which says it is a precursor. The cause cannot be the antecedent of the cause."
Religion
"World creation. One of the amazing creations of human ingenuity is the cogwheel: that one wheel drives three, ten, fifteen, and all drive each other. Nature, life, the world are all such cogs. Only it is not three, not ten, not fifteen, but an infinite series, an infinite totality. Take a speck of dust, or a plant, or the water circulation of the earth, or the human blood circulation, the human heart, - whatever you look at carefully, you will find what I am saying."
Religion
"If St. John were to come to earth and knock on the door of an archbishop under a pseudonym to give him a parish, what would the archbishop say if he did not know Latin."
Religion
"- Quo vadis? asked Peter. Jesus replied: - What makes you speak to me in a language I do not understand?"
Religion
"Dogma. Church philosophy says: nothing is small before God, because nothing is great. By this logic, I can say of the mosque of Vereshchagin, in which white Turks pray: - In this picture there is nothing black, according to this, there is nothing white."
Religion
"In the December 1906 issue of Századok, a priest claims that the god of the Hungarians never existed. Before Christianity every nation had its own national god, why shouldn't the Hungarian have had one? The author of the article, of course, does not deal with this. For him, it is enough to demolish a beautiful tradition. That he does not put anything in its place is not his concern. These are the vandals of science today."
Jesus
"What was Jesus like? This is a question that occupies the minds of many who have wandered in the past. It is certain that opinions will never be unanimous on this question. Each person's own image of Jesus is often quite contrary to the doctrines and traditions of Christianity. The painter or sculptor imagines Christ in a very different light from the laborer. They all see Him as wonderful and try to strip Him of as much of the earthly and the human as possible. The other day (1894) our daily newspaper published a letter of Lentulus to the Roman Senate, in which he describes Jesus with remarkable fidelity. The part of the letter concerning Jesus reads. "His name is Jesus Christ. The people consider him a prophet, his disciples consider him the Son of God. He raises the dead and heals the sick. He is a tall man, but all his parts are very regular. His countenance is stern and has a wonderful effect on everyone; he is to be feared, but also to be loved involuntarily. His light straw wine-colored hair covers his head smoothly up to his ears, and from there and around his neck it falls in thick, shining curls over his shoulders. He has a clear high forehead, and an extremely delicate complexion, with only a faint blush. His features are fair and pleasing, his nose and mouth impeccable. His mustache and beard are of the same color as his hair and are as thick. His eyes are blue and bright. When she scolds someone, her words ring with great power, when she teaches, her voice is soft and gentle. His features reflect courage and dignity. No one has ever seen him laugh or cry. Everything he says is clever and meaningful, and not a word is superfluous. He is perhaps the most beautiful man on earth." My note: The letter is undoubtedly a fabrication, for Jesus could not have been a well-fed and indoor man. His face must have been transformed when he spoke, if it was not beautiful, it became beautiful. All the face-masking and face-pleasing arts in the world cannot make a face so beautiful as the soul that dwells in it. The face is transparent. The soul shines through it. The face of the noble soul bewitches man. It is ethereal. We feel that: that man is not a slave to the interests of the earthly. He is above them. It is in our spiritual instinct that the inferior should yield to the noble."
Jesus
"The house of Jesus. By the roadside stands the cross. But it never occurs to anyone that it is not only a reminder of Jesus' suffering, but also of Jesus' goodness. We should have a little house behind each cross, made of wood where it cannot be made of stone, made of stone where it cannot be made of marble. In this hut should be a well, a bed and a stove; in its window the traveller should put a piece of bread or a penny. So that Jesus on the cross may lift up his head to heaven."
Jesus
"Why are you proving who Jesus was, what he was? We know the sun by its light."
Jesus
"If Jesus had written his book himself, the language of Europe and America today would be Aramaic. Just as Arabic is the language of the Mohammedans. Christianity would spread, language would spread: languages would slowly disappear. But surely this is not the will of the creator of the world order. Competition between nations would be weakened. It is necessary for the perfection of mankind."
Jesus
"The most perfect man has been drawn by every philosopher in the image of his own face. Whether he asks: who is perfect, or who is happy, or who is brilliant. His answer is always best suited to himself. It is interesting to think about the sages from the earliest founders of religion to the talking sages to the writing sages, - up to the present day. Even in Jesus, I find a reflection of himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, he mentions first among the eight beatitudes the happiness of living a spiritual life, unconcerned with wealth."
Jesus
"If we are souls from the Spirit of God, sparks from the eternal fire of the heart, why should not a spark from God, greater than all of them, burst forth? In this sense, there is no reason not to accept the reality of Jesus as "the Son of God"."
Jesus
"?What is bigger: To believe that Jesus is God and that he came down to earth to become man? or to believe that he was a man and that he ascended to the divine heights of feeling and thinking."
Jesus
"This is my body. If Christ meant, This is my bread for you. As bread is your daily food, so let me be bread for your souls. I: the way, the truth, the life. And my blood shall be the wine of your souls. Remember that I have shed it for you. It is utterly impossible, and my feeling tells me against it, that Christ should have understood his body materially, that he should have had it in his mind that the body should eat the body; that he should have wished to be united in the belly and in the bowels. For he despised the flesh and always spoke of union in the spirit. I don't feel like a Papuan!"
Jesus
"In the question of the holy wafer, the main point is not whether we agree with St. Augustine or with the Fourth Council of the Lateran, but whether or not this way of union with Christ makes us happy. If so, it's not right to deprive those it does."
Jesus
"The Sermon on the Mount is the great turning point in the history of mankind. It is the turning point of humanity from animalism to GOD. But you will stumble over my first sentence: Blessed are the poor in spirit. How could JESUS have said this? The poor in spirit is the opposite of the poor in flesh. The poor in spirit is the foolish, the stupid, the raging, the envious, the fornicator, the miser, the stingy, the cruel, in short, the animal man. JESUS could not set these before us as models. Obviously a pen error. Either Matthew's pen error or the pen error of the one who translated the Gospel from Hebrew into Greek. The original text is known to have been lost. If it is Matthew's mistake, let us wonder how people of that time, especially fishermen like Matthew, could write. After all, they could not always understand JESUS, let alone write down his words accurately from memory. Not even Our Father is accurately described. Let's look at that speech in Luke. Here the introduction reads: Blessed are you who are poor! This seems more correct. The other sayings of JESUS confirm the correctness of Luke's record rather than Matthew's. But how could that spiritual word have got there? Did it just slip out of the pen? Impossible. The word must have appeared in his mind when he was writing, and he did not put it into the sentence correctly. A stone misplaced: it sticks out of the pavement. It must be avoided so as not to trip over it! The pen error could have been made in this way: JESUS must have often repeated his statements, his individual sayings, and Matthew remembered some spiritual word. It is probable that JESUS was speaking of the spiritual man as happy, the spiritual man without possessions, who has no other care on earth than spiritual perfection. So JESUS did not say that the poor in spirit are happy, but this: Blessed are the spririts, the poor. That is, the spiritual people who do not care about money or riches. Besides, the letters of the Bible are not unchanged. The serpent in paradise speaks of gods in the Károli Bible, but only of God in the Luther Bible. The French English Protestant Bibles all mention gods with the lips of the serpent. The Vulgate too. But already the Roman Catholic schools change gods to God. And there is as much difference in meaning as there is between a poor spiritual man and a poor in spirit man."
Bible
"Every person must discover an America for themselves. He has known it from pictures, from memory, from reading. Yet you are amazed when you see it with your own eyes, when you breathe its air, when you partake of its treasures. This America of all men is the Bible."
Bible
"When I speak of the Bible, I speak more of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, only the first four chapters, Psalms, Book of Job, PROVERBS are the ones we can read once every ten years. But the NEW TESTAMENT can be read every day. The New Testament is the starry heavens in book form. It is mysterious and inextricable. Its radiant thoughts linger in the shadows of infinity, and behind them God hovers. Just don't read it as a novel. The legends of the Bible must be understood. What value is there in Ezopus if we read only the animal stories? Let us remove the animal mask, there is man underneath, and there are human truths. Remove the human mask from the legend, and we find the divine truths. Let the biblical sayings, and especially the words of Jesus, be the first things we read with attention. Mark such sayings with coloured pencil. The very first one you mark should be this saying of JESUS: Blessed are the pure in heart."
Bible
"I saw an experiment on how to purify methylated spirits? They put a handful of soil in a glass. It was about halfway up the glass. Then it was filled to the top with spirit. They stirred it. ...Now, I thought, if this mixture could speak, it would say so: - I am mud. The contents of the glass began to clear. It was still cloudy, but it was clearer above. I thought: now the mixture, if it had a sense of itself, a feeling of itself, would not dare to swear that it was mud. Then the murkiness disappeared completely. ... Now, I thought, if the contents of the glass could speak, they would speak now: - I am spirit."
Bible
"To those who believe that man grows like a mushroom and dies like a mushroom, the Bible is a mushroom. But he who already feels that he is a spirit, understands from the Bible that the book is the work of sent spirits. The teaching of heavenly sages in the language of earthly children. Why in the language of children? Because everything on earth changes, except the language of children. The child-language is always capable, always fabulous. The picture has the power to explain, the tale is the indestructible frame of all wisdom. And it speaks to all kinds of minds."
God
"The New Testament passage is the story of the soul-swarm who descended from the highest place. The fisherman, the tax collector, the tent-maker, were all of the same company in the kingdom of souls. They were embodied in different families, and when the Most High appeared among them, they knew him and gathered around him. They were the seed-sowers of Heaven on this earth."
God
"God does not need our prayers. We do. For me, it would be terrible for God and Jesus and Mary to demand prayer from man. They can't accept it from us because we don't know who they are. Our God, our Jesus, our Mary, to whom we pray, is not the real God, not the real Jesus, not the real Mary, but the creation of the imagination: the images within us."
God
"Should we not pray? Indeed! Just not the usual way. He who thinks about God, prays. He who admires his works, prays. He who looks to heaven with trust, prays. And we pray best when we help our fellow human beings by thinking of God."
God
"I would suggest that for the Jews, God is not the soul of the world, but the soul of the nation. So it is a purely earthly god, to whom the Jew is the man."
God
"God did not create man to worship Himself. He assigned him other things on earth than to move his mouth all day long. The thought is prayer enough, which wakes itself up and rises by itself. Even this is not for him, but for us."
God
"The idol gods with the angry foreheads... How is our Old Testament God different from them. I can't imagine a God with a hurt face or a whip. And does the God of love push souls into the ethernal flames? We must lead the people today to the path of perfection by teaching them the terrible logic of consequences."
God
"Who put the heart in our chest? Who made it move incessantly? Would he who put the angelic voices of love into this tiny engine of our body be himself without a heart?"
God
"The science of natural life does not seek God, only the mysteries of nature. And yet as it unravels them, it keeps finding God: step by step, it comes closer to Him. These are the miners of science: they started out in the dark, with tiny lamps, and now they find themselves in a mine of light. With each blow of the pickaxe, a new light shines forth."
God
"We want to understand the universe, but the mysteries of a hen's egg leave us in doubt."
God
"They write books about how the world came into being, and they can't even figure out how the blade of grass came into being."
God
"A man's work is only wonderful as long as it is new, and as long as someone does something different. The work of God, though it be a seed of acacia, a grain of sand, a hair of the head, is always wonderful, and who can make a more special work after him?"
God
"At the age of five, we wonder: - From what was the table made? At the age of fifteen: - From what was man made of? At the age of twenty-five: - From what was God made of? And we accept forever that: - The carpenter made the table. But now we say of man: - He came into being by himself. And of God we say: - He does not exist."
God
"The world we do not know where it comes from. Nor do we know where God came from. But we can know that we are. From where? We cannot know. But we are. Then why can't God be just like that?"
God
"The universe. It's like the crypto-letter. He who does not know the key says: - What a jumble of letters! What nonsense! This word is the key to the secret writing of everything: - God."
God
"One feels separate, but all people are in the universe. The all is one. He is only a part of it. And even if he feels himself to be a separate one, and takes his life as his own, his life in the all is like the life of the cell in the human body: the cell is a separate life, and yet it is unwittingly, involuntarily, a part and servant of the all of the body."
God
"In animals, the reason given for caring for offspring is that breastfeeding is a pleasurable experience for the animal. So it's no wonder! But it is perhaps interesting that some beetles (spiders, butterflies, flies) never see their babies and make artistic shelters to protect them from the cold of winter, to save them for the coming year. It may be a pleasant feeling, but perhaps there is something to admire in its work. If nothing else, it is that it does a purposeful work, without knowing the purpose itself, but it is a work that it is compelled to do."
Judaism
"The plan for the perfection of the human race is a divine plan which can be discerned in the separate blood and languages of the races. If there were one-language and one-nation in the world, the spiritual leaders would be one kind of flowers of that nation. German philosophers and Goethe could not have risen from an Italian bed, nor Italian painters and sculptors descended from Prussian mothers and fathers, etc."
Judaism
"As the individual man passes through the gradations of millions of years during the nine months before his birth, and after his birth, when he reaches the highest stage of spiritual development, he attains the stage of the all-embracing altruist, so do the nations. Already now that Judaism is finding it more difficult to climb up the spiritual ladder, its situation is sometimes becoming precarious."
Judaism
"The Jewish problem is also unsolvable in our country because, in fighting the bad Jews, we are also hurting the good Jews, who are already Hungarian at heart and unbaptized Christians. In other words: it is already part of the ethical unity of the European peoples. But if we deal with the Jewish question with these things in mind, the bad Jews (the Jews who maintain alienation, who seek to enrich themselves by impoverishing others, who hate Christians) will continue to grow and to corrupt us. The two cannot be separated because their religion unites them... The problem can therefore only be remedied if the good Jews themselves wish it. Then they themselves will separate the bad from the good, and they will find the best way - how to send the 40,000 Babylonians home again."
Sin
"What is sin? Any action for which a voice of our inner feeling says: - Don't do it!"
Sin
"The inner voice that tells man to do good is the voice of the soul. The voice that calls him to evil is the voice of the body. And the voice of the soul is the voice of God."
Sin
"The inner voice before a great deed is done: of the body and of the soul. But after the deed is done, there is always only one: that of the soul."
Sin
"I wonder with what eyes he looks in the mirror, who can only ever see a villain in it."
Sin
"How bad we are! - is best seen by the fact that we try to do a lot of things, but not so much to be good."
Sin
"Whenever the will is awakened to a noble deed, its first move is always to break handcuffs."
Sin
"If Moses had not written the Ten Commandments, we would still know. The prohibition of sin appears in the soul of every man - between thunder and lightning. But he who does not believe God, how can he believe his word."
Sin
"Jurors! If you want to judge justly, look on the guilty man, even if he is your brother, as if he were a stranger; and on the stranger as if he were your brother."
Sin
"In the story of Suzanne, the old goats are no meaner than the painters who paint Suzanne as the elders would have wanted her to be."
Sin
"A man who is not used to ugly speeches feels that he has writing on his soul: Desecration of this place is forbidden!"
Sin
"Phaedrus' peasant could forgive the snake for biting him. He could forgive it, but he couldn't put it back in his bosom."
Sin
"Behind the sin, the punishment walks with a whip. Its task: to cast us out of the animal world."
Sin
"I hate tattoos. And yet I would like to write it on the back of many people's hands: Every action has a consequence!"
Sin
"When sin and morality struggle within us, we have an animal wrestling with an angel."
Sin
"However secretly you do evil, its dark shadow will rise and haunt you and will pay sevenfold and seventy-sevenfold in suffering. And however secretly you do good, its flower will fall on your head years later."
Sin
"If we came to Earth to live in the flesh, why would some manifestations of the life of the flesh be sinful? - It's not sin, it's just the struggle of the spiritual part of us to keep our heavenliness."
Sin
""Moral freedom." Many people understand it as the freedom to be a prisoner of all kinds of sin."
Sin
"Someone says: - The purpose of life is hidden from me. Answer: - But you can see the way. If you travel along the path where you see the footprints of people more perfect than you, you can always feel at ease about the end of your journey."
Sin
"With what a triumphant eye the philosopher of history describes how once all that we now call sin was morality! That is to say, murder, fornication; drunkenness, robbery, theft, and so on. Well, there is nothing to wonder at. Mankind has evolved from animalism, and is still evolving today. But let it be shown that what was once felt to be morality, and became known as sin, becomes morality again. Is it conceivable that mercy will one day be called sin? Is it conceivable that cruelty, robbery, fornication, slavery, idleness, will be called morality?"
Sin
"One of the chief wonders of life in our world is the uninterrupted, never-retreating progress towards spiritual perfection."
Sin
"The history of humanity in five sentences: Light gave birth to life. The life gave birth to the will. Will gave birth to sin. Sin gave birth to suffering. Suffering gave birth to love."
Sin
"The story of the individual is simply the story of humanity. As soon as his mind is enlightened, his will will peer into the obscurity. Sin is always a fall. It is a departure from God. But behind all sin lurks the stern-faced penance. Sooner or later it reaches the sinner and strikes him. But out of suffering springs a heavenly flower: love. This flower absorbs the human soul and bends. And God finally reaches for it and lifts it back to Himself in the Light."
Lies
"He who lies is either a coward, or evil, or joker. All three faces are animal. Always tell the truth or keep silent. Let the questions of an intruding man be rejected either by counter-question, or by jest, or by deafness. The principle of telling the truth does not mean that anyone has our inner drawer open."
Lies
"It probably doesn't need to be said that when we tell a story that is intended to amuse, the brush of imagination is free to colour. But if the story is about a real man, and casts a shadow over him, it would be written on the tablets of conscience to do so. We shall leave man-eating to the savages."
Lies
"Telling the truth when others would necessarily lie is always a heroic act. Afterwards, you get the same feeling that comes after a victory, like drinking from a golden cup. But what have we conquered?"
Suffering
"Man is a god-beam in a clay pot. He can move the vessel's enclosure: he can walk with it, but only death can take it out, - if he does not break the enclosure himself. But it's wired tight, and if you break it, it hurts. See, pain is also a divine wisdom in the structure of the mysterious vessel."
Suffering
"We deserve all the bad things because we have sunk into them ourselves. Those good souls who love us, will surely catch many stones that fall against our heads. But we don't know that. On the contrary, if they fail to prevent some trouble, we'll know about it..."
Suffering
"Sometimes the doctor cures us with poison, sometimes with pruning, sometimes with sawing, and we accept all the bad things in order to be healthy."
Suffering
"Is not this life on earth, with all its suffering, a similar process of healing for the eternal human soul? We have foreknown our sufferings, and the powers above from time to time make us suffer in a manner sufficient to heal us."
Suffering
"A child who does not commit sins does not become an intelligent person. Sin has the same role in the development of the soul as a coining press has in minting money: Gold swings out of the machine at a strong squeeze."
Suffering
"A person who has experienced great suffering receives a new heart from God."
Suffering
"We learn happiness in the school where the master teacher is called Suffering."
Suffering
"The most certain path to unhappiness is taken by those who pursue happiness."
Suffering
"We drink many glasses of water and many glasses of wine on this earth, and everyone must drink some very bitter ones. But after every bitter drink, it is as if the hand of an angel offers you a cup of refreshing sweet."
Suffering
"No one suffers innocently. Not even the infant. It is this seemingly innocent suffering that proves that our life on Earth is the consequence of a previous life."
Suffering
"If the soul and the body could be seen as separate, as wine and its lees, we would see, after each suffering, how we have been purified and strengthened and separated."
Suffering
"?Who has to suffer more: The one who is ready to put up with everything? Or the one who cannot tolerate anything?"
Suffering
"It's a test of our wits: how much we can push our mental pain under our heels."
Suffering
"When we get in trouble we say: - There is no God! There is no divine providence! No guardian angel! But God is not a stern nursemaid. He gave man reason to take care of himself. Otherwise, all this earthly woe and misery only confirms the opinion that we are souls departed from God. The earth is the correctional institution of the Universe."
Suffering
"Why do animals have to suffer? Why are horses slaves? Why is the end of the rabbit a tragedy? Why must the bird in the hands of a child suffer strangulation? And the animals that fall into the hands of a Chinese chef, whose breasts are sliced open alive to have a heart squeezed? The human soul rebels at the sight and the hearing of these things. But even on this earth, human suffering often finds a comforting explanation, so we must also think of animal suffering as an explanation: The mystery of God. And, above all, let us not forget that to set God before man's own condemnatory thoughts, as before some tribunal of law, - oh, this is folly!"
Suffering
"The clever fish farmer also releases pike into the fish pond. The fish grow agile and strong when harassed. I wonder if the troubles on earth aren't such pikes?"
Suffering
"It is a divine law that there should be no equality in the world. The weak are oppressed. Oppression is suffering. Suffering makes us move. Movement matures strength. When he then becomes stronger, he is the oppressor. - And who perishes under the pressure? - Only his form is destroyed. Life itself is eternal. Well then it takes a new form, stronger than the old, more vital. This is the order of eternal change."
Fraternal love
"Some people look as if they shed their animal skin yesterday: they are still characterised by violence, intrusiveness, predation, deceit, cold selfishness, poison fangs, in short: animal traits. They must shed their skin once more to feel the wings of heaven. To love our neighbour does not mean to become the tools of animal men, to care for them at our own expense, but to be theirs only when they suffer, when they are in need. Henceforth, caution and cool calm!"
Fraternal love
"The meeting of two eyes, the contact of two souls. There are not enough degrees on the thermometer of Fahrenheit to measure such touches. What a vast difference there is between two eyes looking together, when the sulphur-flame of hatred burns, and when two souls kiss each other in silence."
Fraternal love
"The pearl of the shelled mollusk is born of suffering. The pearl of man is love."
Love of humanity
"The principle of philanthropy does not mean letting all men hang around our necks, only that we should feel the suffering as our brothers and sisters, and that when it is a question of humanity, the nation or the interests of several people, we should be willing to join in their work with all the strength we can. But let us enter into closer contact only with those whose spiritual development is not inferior to our own. We do this, anyway, guided by an inner feeling."
Love of humanity
"It would be an interesting study (One man's life worth living) if we were to examine the greatest writers of all nations: which one, what did he love in his fellow man? Let us take from our own literature history Jókai, Arany. From the Germans, Goethe. From the English: Shakespeare, Dickens. From the French: Zola. From the Russians, only Dostoevsky. From Jókai's examination comes the stage hero of the romantic middle of the last century, who works with surprises, cuts his way out of everything, is handsome, strong, clever, lucky, but if you take him out of the light of the stage lamps: a puppet. Arany's examination reveals an educated peasant. Goethe's Faust is a clever, smarty, with courtly manners. Zola: a stallion dressed in various human clothes. Dostoyevsky: a cold snake's eye, but a heart that always bleeds warmly at the sight of the suffering. The writer who paints people thus loves and paints his own reflection best, most often, most perfectly."
Love of humanity
"Man's goal is perfection. His means is spiritual purity. The perfect man with a pure soul knows that the basis of life is love. On this earth, in a world of all kinds of perfection, love is imperfect. Yet the purest rays of love can be found in the love of family and in the gratitude that comes to us from our good deeds. In the higher worlds, love is certainly purer and warmer, and has a wider circle than on earth."
Love of humanity
"If you see a small child selling goods or newspapers or matches or whatever at night, give them food - never money. And send him home with the policeman on the plea of human kindness."
Love of humanity
"People wash their faces and hands, but how many people wash their souls every day?"
Love of humanity
"Whatever we do for others, we are still only doing it for ourselves."
Love of humanity
"Is it an honest family when one brother has more money than he can spend and the other doesn't have enough to keep warm, clothe and feed himself in winter?"
Love of humanity
"When a child shows you a sore body part while crying, that's what the child thinks: - You feel sorry for me. But what is compassion? What is compassion for? For what purpose? Compassion is the balm of love. A child is closer to Heaven than an adult. And Heaven is the home of love. And the child thinks he is in Heaven here too."
Love of humanity
"If we imagine the path to perfection as a staircase, on one of the stairs (above the bottom step), it is written: - I say no evil of anyone. On the next step: - I don't even think."
Love of humanity
"Pocket change of wisdom. Many times was it said that everyone is satisfied with his wit. But Réaumur didn't build a mind scale. When such a device eventually comes into being, we will see that we are already thinking in the first degree: - I'm not hurting anybody, because I'm uncomfortable too. And at the top level: - I'll handle everything that other people would be angry about with a shrug of the shoulders."
Love of humanity
"I have often recommended the Misericordians to the attention of testators, especially, of course, the Hungarian friary. The idle monastic orders should be suppressed in favour of the Misericordians. The Mizerians should be given every possible opportunity to open their doors to the suffering in Hungarian cities everywhere."
Love of humanity
"A measure of human development: In a lower class man how small is the love of self and of offspring, and at most the love of those who favour his life. In middle-ranking man, love extends to parents and wife. He respects spiritual men and country. He sacrifices when necessary, though never anonymously. His love extends to all those whom he sees and honours with his bodily eyes. The love of the superior man extends to all the human race. He feels, he knows that life is eternal. His work and his life on earth are therefore that of the human race. All his high ideals shine on the zenith of the common good. And because he does not live for himself, he is ready to die for his fellow man."
Love of humanity
"Every debt is a chain around your neck, - around your neck, around your feet. If it doesn't squeeze, it weighs.There is but one debt that does not bind, but if you were bound, it sets you free, that does not oppress, but lifts you up, - if you leave the evil deed of the wicked unpaid."
Love of humanity
"Would you like to paint a label on your shop? Head to the painting school at noon, where art teachers and apprentice painters study. Address the one that's the most worn, the most lean. You'll get a prettier picture and, if you want, a cheaper one than at the title painter's. And for one man, you're a messenger from God."
Love of humanity
"You think that no one loves you. Go to the Orphanage - free admission - and you'll find hundreds of people there who aren't loved either. But how nice it would be if you asked: - Which one is the most orphaned? And you'd take that child's hand and smooth his face: - I'll be your father from now on."
Service in return
"If someone speaks to you like this: - How shall I repay you for this favour? Answer: - Give pleasure to one whom you look upon with displeasure because of his physical ugliness."
Enemy
"Everyone has an enemy. It's a law of nature. The will of man is steeled by resistance, by struggle. Nevertheless, every time someone blows at us, let us take an account of ourselves, is it because of something we have done? If we have done wrong, let us atone for it. If not, let us do him as much good as we can. But there are also enemies who are not our enemies through our fault. Let us not do evil to them either. Let us only raise a shield, but let us not shoot back. Such enemies are animal men. Let us watch them with cold calm. For me, one of my pleasures is to do good to such an enemy when I can - behind his back. He must not know it, for that would be a submission. Let the imperfect man remain my enemy rather than become my friend."
Enemy
"But what beauty is there in doing good to someone who is out to harm us? The sense of difference, that is the beauty."
Nemesis
"For some people, it is like an angelic hand guiding their path on earth. For others, it is as if a devil's hand were throwing thorns, daggers, digging ditches and pits. Some men's fortunes seem to fall almost on purpose. On others, misfortune almost rains. Even prehistoric peoples have experienced this peculiarity. Proverbs are philosophical warnings based on life experiences. The imagination of the Greeks also created a god for this peculiarity. It is impossible not to think that love and hatred are transmitted to the other world. And the invisible hand of great love and great hatred reaches into the destiny of some."
Seeking happiness
"We want to be happy. That's all we strive for. But what is happiness? For the carnal man, carnal pleasures: a heaped bowl, a filled jug, a bed, killing animals, playing cards, and the money that provides the non-stop supply of these. The spiritual man already knows that these are fleeting goods; there are better, more lasting things than these. He is already striving for the good that is without form, for goods that leave no bitter taste in the mouth, that are not followed by a feeling of dejection, sorrow, emptiness. The spiritual man seeks, searches, equips himself with knowledge, and ponders: - Who am I? - What am I? - Where am I? - Why am I alive? - How long do I live? - Where is the real good? - What is it? He seeks happiness through intellectual paths."
Seeking happiness
"Only a man with a calm soul can be happy. One who never has a cloud on his forehead. Whose soul is never muddy, neither he smears others, nor can he be smeared. All his thoughts are upright and honest."
Seeking happiness
"For a Memory Book. The past is not yours, only the shadow that follows it. The future is not yours, only its ray that casts itself before you. The clock is yours, only the clock you live in. Do not hurry out of it, if it is full of sunny, flowery peace: all the business of the world is not equal to a happy hour of the heart."
Soul deniers
"The Soul Denier: - The fruit of a great man (Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Petőfi) is the slowly-prepared fruit of a family over many centuries. A product of succession. In a single man, the sum and maturation of the values of the minds of hundreds and hundreds of ancestors. Answer: - Blind souls! You know the centuries-long preparation of the appearance of a great man, so how can you not accept his continued existence? If nature can create so great a thing consistently for centuries, as the mind of a Shakespeare, it would be inconsistent to let it rot in three days, like a cucumber thrown away."
Soul deniers
"The soul-denier. - For it is certain that the body, even if it has ceased to live, does not perish, it only changes, but the self-consciousness, the self?... Answer: - Well, if the body is so precious to the universe that not a molecule of it can perish, why should the self perish, the flame of the body, according to the theory of inheritance, which is ever refining through time? If nothing is lost, but only changes shape, why should this not also change shape? For the self is not earthly matter, so it cannot take shape, but only change its clothes. If we imagine an immortal captain of a ship, we understand that the ship may sink, but the captain always escapes and steers a new ship again. The soul is the master and governor of the body."
House of correction
"The two dumbbells of the spiritual strength exercise: 1. To do something every day that is for the spiritual good. To impose my will on something I don't do. For example, patience when I am not patient. Calmness, when I am not calm. A gentle face when I'm angry. Suppressing anger, etc. (Because anger evokes distressing and harmful imagery), etc. 2. Not doing something every day that the body desires. For example, getting up earlier than the body would wish. Refusing to eat a good meal just to make the body feel that it is not ordering us, etc."
House of correction
"If anyone behaves wickedly, or rudely, or deceitfully, or in any vexatious or offensive way towards you, do not speak out against him, nor quarrel or complain anywhere. For that person will be like that to others, and others will not be patient. So leave the retaliation to others. The main idea in the discomforts of life should always be that retribution is also a discomfort, so let it be among the other evils of life. Is he a wise man who sets fire to his own head? That is what a wrathful man does."
House of correction
"Hatred is a natural feeling, which makes us defend ourselves, against people or species of people who are harmful to us, - unless we have scientific knowledge in psychology and natural science. (He who understands everything does not feel hatred even for his enemy.) It is certainly an unpleasant feeling, and, if manifested in another, it is odious. If, therefore, you do not have the aptitude to bear such a feeling calmly, at least do not talk about it, or say the exact opposite of what you feel. And then you speak in the language of angels."
House of correction
"Our greatest enemy is anger. But not the one that attacks us from the heart of others. We can defend ourselves against that. It is our own anger."
Life Purpose
"Most of the reason people make mistakes in life is because they think this Earth is the world. Worm thinking. The worm can't think otherwise, because its life flows in decomposing waste, in litter, and its purpose in life is to turn that putrid matter into living flesh. But man is not a worm. Man eats only what his body needs to sustain itself. This is no more than the oil the machine consumes. Is the machine made to consume oil? Man can also see that the purpose of his life is not to eat, not to feed the body. The human body has no work to do in the metabolism of nature, in the alternating economy. Man lives for himself and for other people. Man does not live for his body, but his body lives for man. So he is not for the Earth, but the Earth is for him. But if we are not on the Earth for the Earth, then for us the Earth cannot be the whole World. These two words are often repeated in my notes: body-man, soul-man. You must understand these two terms clearly."
Life Purpose
"If an old dead man at the edge of the grave could open his lips once more, all would say: - I have lived foolishly! For all have lived on this earth as if it were the place of eternity, and they have felt themselves at the beginning of infinite time, toiling, sweating, gathering, arranging themselves so that they might live well beyond the beginning. And suddenly, you don't know how: there he is, lying by the grave. So he lived, but he did not live. And he hadn't thought of that before. If we could look back from the cemetery gates, many of us could say: our life's journey to this point has been nothing but restlessness for rest."
Life Purpose
"The birth of everything: plants, animals, human beings, happens in the great care of nature. Death can be every little contingency. Obviously, in the life of man, the struggle of life (for a purpose unknown to us) is more important than the securing of the body for a long time. The body, after all, engages man also to sufferings, and there are enough of those sufferings that touches us. Surely the Creator could have made the human body to last for thousands of years. All it would have taken was a slight change in the law of cellular senescence. But the purpose of life is not earthly."
Life Purpose
"The complaining proverb: A father supports 9 children, etc. The reality is that the father feels himself in the child. (That child is himself too.) But the child feels his father, his mother as another person. And that is good. The father or mother should not be separated from the child, but the child should be separated, should live its own life in its own specialness. How identical is the law: the tree and its fruit."
Life Path
"The best occupation is one that connects you to nature. So: farming, forestry, cartography, navigation, fishing, etc. In urban and indoor occupations, the best person is a specialist. Those who can do what no one else can do are out of the competition and get rich quick. In objects, too, what is of greatest value is that which is one, of which there is no more. Cheap objects and cheap people are of no value to society."
Life Path
"Frederick the Great is credited with the saying that of the twenty-four hours of the day, eight should be for work, eight for recreation and eight for sleep. You should consider the eight hours of work as the eight hours of the soul. But these eight hours must be mixed with the eight hours of the body, because eight hours of spiritual work in a row is too much. In the forenoon do the intellectual work for which you need strength and clarity, and leave reading and the arts for the afternoon. After lunch, rest for an hour."
Our life journeys
"Life journeys... They are as blurred as glass in the ground. We regain their old whiteness and shine through suffering. Hence it is that to life on earth man is born of man. It's a linking of broken links. We look out for the other living and connect to their hearts. But because we cannot know the future in advance, our preconceived characters and circumstances can change in such a way that our lives go awry. Then we begin the carnal life all over again."
Our life journeys
"But there is no such thing as a life that is completely wrong. Everyone brings with him the powers acquired in previous bodily lives. It is in the little apple seed whether it will be a Szercsika or a Sikulai or a King of the Pippins. Even if we are not aware of it, we develop according to our predispositions, and only when we are mature do we realise what powers we had in our childhood. It is also a failure of life if all our work and all our thought is the acquisition of wealth. We save first to prepare for the seven lean years. We save then to live in abundance, then so that our children will not have to work, and even then we save because we have become accustomed to it, because we have forgotten the purpose. We no longer collect to live, but live to collect. And we collect, we collect: we have no thought, no desire, no action, only collection, the multiplication of money. Finally, death pulls our hands off the money bag. - Has such a man lived rightly? Life is work, but man is not a hamster. The purpose of life is progress towards perfection. Work is only a stepping stone. The church is higher up. He who walks blindly and aimlessly up the stairs, hits a wall. And do our feet walk the path of our child? As one of the tasks of our life has been work, so will the next generation after us. Are we doing their work? Shall we hang the apple on the seedling's head, and say to him: - "Never trouble yourself with the fruit, my soul, for we have already borne fruit for you. What shall he do now? A man either builds or destroys, but he must act. If our offspring lives for his offspring, he also will waste his life. If he does not live for his descendants, he will destroy: he will be a waster, a gambler, a gambler, a horse-runner, a gun-carrier, a xenophobe, a brawler, in short: - a man of distinction. Rarely do such people find a new space for action. So you work: plough, sow, reap. But it would be a sin for you to gather so much seed that your descendants need neither plough nor sow! As soon as you have insurance against scarcity, turn your attention to the development of your spiritual life. Your emblem should not be the golden calf, but the captive stork, the wing-barred angel chained to the earth, brooding upwards."