Quotes

"

One satisfaction, yes, one fulfillment in life: to do the quiet, menial, but skilfully done work to which your inclination and ability have assigned you, not to escape from it into vain "roles", to be content with the satisfaction that your work was accurate to the point of possibility, and perhaps useful to people. That is the best that life can give.

"

It fits like a stick to a quiver.

"

They buried the hatchet.

"

You are no better than Deákné's canvas.

"

It is difficult for two people to negotiate on the same bone.

"

Whoever is not against us is with us.

"

He fights a windmill battle.

"

Everyone is the forge of their own luck.

"

He forges/makes a virtue out of necessity.

"

Explain your certificate.

"

Tell me who your friend is, I'll tell you who you are.

"

See how you can make every day, even the most ordinary, dreary weekday, a celebration, if only for a few moments! With a kind word. With an act of dignity. A polite gesture. It doesn't take much for a human celebration. You can sneak some magical element into every day, give yourself the gift of a quarter of an hour of experiencing the truth of a book, the satisfaction of learning some obscure concept, comforting or enlightening your surroundings. Life will be richer, more festive, and more human if you fill a few minutes of the ordinary with the extraordinary, the human, the benign, and the courteous; in other words, with celebration.

"

When the century was young, I was young; and because we were young, of course, we were both revolutionaries. Then time passed, and the century, and its children, entered manhood; and they wanted to grow old wisely. I wished to put on slippers or a saloon coat; I wished to throw away all the slogans of the revolution, because time had ripened them in my heart and in my mind, and I knew that liberty, equality, and fraternity were not as perfect ideals in practice as I had believed when I was young and a revolutionary. I already wanted to talk about the fact that it is more difficult to preserve than to throw away the old and create a new one from the pots; I already wanted to reconcile with the people, to build order, to bring in all the flags. But time has not allowed me to do that. And I had to know that I must remain hopelessly revolutionary, because the generation that follows me is, mysteriously, not revolutionary at all; I have no one to whom, in the order of nature and human affairs, I can hand over the flag; I must remain a protester and a blockade-maker, because I live in an age whose young people willingly assume all the limitations that the century and I, when we were young, did not assume.

Toothlessly and with a greying hair, I am forced to remain a revolutionary who stubbornly repeats the promises of freedom of thought, equality and fraternity, in which he perhaps no longer believes so absolutely. I must remain a sans-culotte* even in my old age when it would have been so nice to have worn a saloon coat for once!

"

We have to be very careful of people who have been blessed by nature with talent, but who have not been given a meaning for that talent. They are the most dangerous competitors of any profession and of human coexistence in general. For with the less gifted but intelligent man it is possible to co-operate, but with the man who is gifted but stupid for his own talent there is no agreement. The man thus blessed and beaten is ever suspicious that something will turn out; and his suspicion is justified. At last he is indeed found to be stupid, and this sad handicap reflects on his work and talent. Just as a very beautiful woman, who can smile wittily and pout enchantingly, is no longer so beautiful the moment she is revealed in conversation to be as dumb as the dark night. There is beauty without meaning and there is talent without meaning. These are perverse fairies. So many Celemen Masons: what is built by day is demolished by night. And they are extremely suspicious. A man of sense, without particular talent, can be of more use to the world than a man of talent without sense. In the end they become prophets: so I have experienced.

"

Every time we encounter injustice or cruelty in life - a child is tortured, an animal is abused, a human being is humiliated or denied what is rightfully his by divine and human law - we are always haunted by the question: is it your right and duty to intervene, to intervene, to take on the ungrateful role of an unwelcome praetor in the turmoil of alien fates? Or go away, with a guilty conscience, but unharmed? Know that you have the right to interfere in the affairs of strangers and the world only so long as you, personally, without the interference of foreign men or authorities, can actually help where you see injustice, unfairness or cruelty. For he who, with justifiable indignation, passes on help to others, "calls" the attention of authority or philanthropists to what he has seen, is already making a "cause" out of human misery, is already taking a part between suffering and help, is already deceiving himself and the world. Be alone with human suffering and try to help to the best of your ability. If you can wipe the tears from a child's face, if you can relieve a sick horse, if you can give money that is yours, or clothes to a ragged man, or advice and action to help something, personally - then, only then, you have the right to intervene. But anyone who calls the police in such situations, or writes letters to the newspapers, or takes up collections for the needy, in short, makes a role out of the misery of others for themselves, is suspect. Your pain and misery are personal, and you can only help in person. Everything else is vanity.

"

People are usually offended if we are too polite to them. I'm talking about people in Europe and America. Only the Chinese can endure the unconditional, the unmitigated, the fatal politeness that has already permeated the whole fabric of their bodies and souls, one with life, even for the gut-washers and the princes. This courtesy, which is clear in the way of life of the people, is the supreme manifestation of human coexistence. But our politeness is entirely superficial. To the Frenchman, only his literature and his declaration of war are polite: his dining-room, his shop and his salon are not. It is not enough to say "pardon" when you step on someone's foot. You have to feel 'pardon' - and that is much harder. Our age is one of the most impolite ages of mankind. The executioner of the Middle Ages would kneel before the victim and apologise for having to cut off his neck: and Marie Antoinette would say to Sanson on the scaffold: 'Pardon'. But now neither the executioner nor the victim apologise to each other. This is sad. And if one is perfectly polite nowadays, one's contemporaries perceive this attitude as cold, callous indifference. Today, everyone demands a 'fake confession', and politeness is perceived as evasion and betrayal. But it is not: it is simply experience. There is no other solution. When everyone is digging in each other's guts, with passionate love or mad hatred: you remain polite.

"

Whoever says a, should also say bé.

"

He stirred up the standing water. He threw a stone into the standing water.

"

A good woman is the crown of the house.

"

Study, stud, you'll become an ox.