Quotes
"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."
"Marriage for the eyes: he married a fairy. Marriage in fact: married to a wretched."
"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."
"The violin does not sing by itself, only when it is played by reason. The human body is a violin."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"When you meet someone and suddenly you don't know whether to greet them or not? choose to greet."
"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."
"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."
"When we laugh, we always laugh at others. When we cry, we always cry for ourselves."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The man: - You're mine. Woman: - I'm yours. And then comes married life, in which the saying is placed the other way round."
"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."
"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!"