Henryk Sienkiewicz Quotes

Aspasia and Xantippe in one. I

But I think happiness springs from another source, a far deeper one that doesn't depend on will because it comes from love.

I know that even the meanest person has still at his disposition high-sounding words wherewith to mask his real character.

My position is such that there is no necessity for me to enter into competition with struggling humanity. As to expensive and ruinous pleasures, I am a sceptic who knows how much they are worth, or rather, knows that they are not worth anything.

Anxiety prepares the organism badly for an ordeal which even under more favorable circumstances would not be an easy thing to bear.

Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work.

A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers, giving them not only a faithful picture, but likewise human documents that may be relied upon.

If the infinity of the sea may call out thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him.

Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh.

Own single law; Hei! be amazed, grow not enraged! thou in thy

If you consider yourself a superior type, or even if you be such, let me tell you that the sum total of such superiority, is socially, a minus quantity." I

The evil genius bent upon wrecking my life had not taken in account one thing: a man crushed and utterly wretched cares less for himself than a happy one. In presence of that indifference fate becomes more or less powerless. I was and am still in that frame of mind that, if angry Fortuna came to me in person, and said: "Go to perdition," I should reply calmly: "Be it so," - not out of sorrow for the loss of Aniela, but from mere indifference to everything within or without me. This

I know, 0 Caesar, that thou art awaiting my arrival with impatience, that thy true heart of a friend is yearning day and night for me. I know that thou art ready to cover me with gifts, make me prefect of the pretorian guards, and command Tigellinus to be that which the gods made him, a mule-driver in those lands which thou didst inherit after poisoning Domitius. Pardon me, however, for I swear to thee by Hades, and by the shades of thy mother, thy wife, thy brother, and Seneca, that I cannot go to thee. Life is a great treasure. I have taken the most precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother; that thou didst burn Eome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy dominions. No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man; from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a Domitius on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music, thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, - is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die. Eome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend

England is never in a hurry because she is eternal.

If you borrowed the very moonbeams for your head-dress, if you were a hundred times more beautiful than my fancy can paint, you would be as nothing to me, - less than nothing, because an object of aversion.

It is an altogether wrong idea that the modern product of civilization is less susceptible to love. I sometimes think it is the other way.

But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them.

Hamlet is the human soul as it was, as it is, and as it will be. In conceiving this drama, Shakspeare overstepped the limit fixed even for genius. I can understand Homer and Dante, studied by the light of their epoch. I can comprehend that they could do what they did; but how an Englishman of the seventeenth century could foreknow psychosis, a science of recent growth, will be to me, in spite of my study of Hamlet, an everlasting mystery. Having

Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it.

Wealth is not a hindrance, but rather a help towards attaining a proper standing in a chosen field of activity. I confess that as far as I am concerned, it has done me some service as it preserved my character from many a crookedness poverty might have exposed it to.

the ears of the prince. His guardianship over

In the presence of the storm, thunderbolts, hurricane, rain, darkness, and the lions, which might be concealed but a few paces away, he felt disarmed and helpless.

She prefers simply a life in the shape of an Apollo to that of humpbacked Pulcinello; that is her philosophy. She

On an exhausted field, only weeds grow.

There is probably no greater idler than myself. And I would consider myself a lazy-bones if I did not write so many volumes, and if I did not admire my diligence once I begin writing.

Every novelist should write something for children at least once in his lifetime.

They did not, however, infect the air as the Sudanese sun dried them up like mummies; all had the hue of gray parchment, and were so much alike that the bodies of the Europeans, Egyptians, and negroes could not be distinguished from each other.

It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.

But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, -- happiness and love.

There is within us a moral instinct which forbids us to rejoice at the death of even an enemy.

Our souls are full of Gothic arches, pinnacles, twisted traceries we cannot shake off, and of which Greek minds knew nothing.

Besides, my old opinions - at least, the greater part of them - are now in tatters, like a worn-out garment. But

She wasted and grew so thin that she no longer was a little girl, but the shadow of a little girl. The flame of her life flickered so faintly that it appeared sufficient to blow at it to extinguish it. Stas understood that death did not have to wait for a third attack to take her and he expected it any day or any hour.

It is not Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders, but woman; and sometimes she plays with it as with a ball.

O Petronius, thou hast seen what endurance and comfort that religion gives in misfortune, how much patience and courage before death; so come and see how much happiness it gives in ordinary, common days of life. People thus far did not know a God whom man could love, hence they did not love one another; and from that came their misfortune, for as light comes from the sun, so does happiness come from love....Thou didst say to me that our teaching was an enemy of life; and I answer thee now, that, if from the beginning of this letter I had been repeating only the three words, 'I am happy!' I could not have expressed my happiness to thee. To this thou wilt answer, that my happiness is Lygia. True, my friend. Because I love her immortal soul, and because we both love each other in Christ; for such love there is no separation, no deceit, no change, no old age, no death. For, when youth and beauty pass, when our bodies wither and death comes, love will remain, for the spirit remains. Before my eyes were open to the light I was ready to burn my own house even, for Lygia's sake; but now I tell thee that I did not love her, for it was Christ who first taught me to love. In Him is the source of peace and happiness. It is not I who say this, but reality itself. Compare thy own luxury, my friend, lined with alarm, thy delights, not sure of a morrow, thy orgies, with the lives of Christians, and thou wilt find a ready answer. But, to compare better, come to our mountains with the odor of

He always smiles, even when contemplating nothing good.

Sometimes I have thought that human misery goes far beyond human imagination, - imagination has its limits, and misery, like the vast seas, appears to be without end.

Amid the stillness of the night, in the depths of the ravine, from the direction in which the corpses lay suddenly resounded a kind of inhuman, frightful laughter in which quivered despair, and joy, and cruelty, and suffering, and pain, and sobbing, and derision; the heart-rending and spasmodic laughter of the insane or condemned.

There was only one who understood me, and he understood me wrongly." Miss

Poland! Poland! The very name carries with it sighings and groanings, nation-murder, brilliance, beauty, patriotism, splendors, self-sacrifice through generations of gallant men and exquisite women; indomitable endurance of bands of noble people carrying through world-wide exile the sacred fire of wrath against the oppressor, and uttering in every clime a cry of appeal to Humanity to rescue Poland.

Tell me,' asked Stas, 'what is a wicked deed?' 'If anyone takes away Kali's cow,' he answered after a brief reflection, 'that then is a wicked deed.' 'Excellent!' exclaimed Stas, 'and what is a good one?' This time the answer came without any reflection: 'If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed.' Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole nations.

Day is like day as two beads in a rosary, unless changes of weather form the only variety.

Homesickness springs from the isolation of the soul from its surroundings.

There is in, us a lack of the synthetic faculty which distinguishes things that are important from those that are not.

As I have said, I am comparatively speaking calm, do not wish for anything, or expect anything, am resigned in fact to that kind of spiritual paralysis until the time comes when bodily paralysis carries me off, as it carried off my father.

How utterly unprofitable my life is! These continual searchings of my mind are leading me into the desert.

There speaks again the sceptic; but I shall never be so intoxicated as to lose my capacity of observation.

The shots had dispersed the birds; there remained only two marabous, standing between ten and twenty paces away and plunged in reverie. They were like two old men with bald heads pressed between the shoulders.

An excessive preponderance of an idealistic mood is harmful to society: it creates daydreaming, political Don Quixotism, hope for heavenly intervention. This is an undeniable truth
but it is also true that every extreme is harmful.

hatred is degenerated love,

At most, a hundred paces separated him from them. The powerful beast, seeing the riders and horses, rose on his fore paws and began to gaze at them. The sun, which now stood low, illuminated his huge head and shaggy breasts, and in that ruddy luster he was like one of those sphinxes which ornament the entrances to ancient Egyptian temples.

What dreadful misfortune awaited them among the savage hordes intoxicated with blood?

Youth is the one worthwhile treasure in this world, no matter how miserable the rest of life might be.

The fact is that between the classes there is a vast gulf that precludes all mutual understanding, and makes simultaneous efforts simply impossible.