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Quotes by Polish Authors
"Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line."
"For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness."
"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..."
"What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it."
"Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing."
"He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites and escapes."
"Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it."
"This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 'Yes', without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience."
"But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition- and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation- and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity- the dead to the living and the living to the unborn."
"The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself."
"All a man can betray is his conscience."
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun."
"Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions."
"Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings."
"The question is not how to get cured, but how to live."
"May God permit us both to return to a free and independent Poland."
"This grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings....the merry dance of death and trade goes on."
"As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook."
"I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go."
"This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain..."
"It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing."
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
"The wilderness had caressed him, and-lo!-he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation."
"And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . . Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!"'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed boisterously."
"It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."
"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew."
"To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence."
"I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together."
"You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies -which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world -what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose."
"I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time."
"He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion."
"Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion?"
"Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion."
"Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life."
"Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags-rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief."
"Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin."
"I let him run on, this papier-mâché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried, I could poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe."
"You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends."
"There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget."
"As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs."
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