Quotes

"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."

"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."

"It's a test of our wits: how much we can push our mental pain under our heels."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"Cantors don't know the sound wave's crescendo-decrescendo, only that they can sing a song louder. The craftsmen of singing."

"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."

"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."

"Banii cheltuiți pentru o carte sunt bani aparent aruncați. Ca sămânța."

"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."

"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."

"If you meet someone you know for sure will say hello to you, say hello before they do, even if they're a beggar."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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!"