Quotes from Joseph Roth

Misery crouches beside me, ever larger and ever gentler; pain takes an interest, becomes huge and kind; terror flutters up, and it doesn't even frighten me anymore. And that'a the most desolate thing of all.

My former home, the monarchy, was a large house with many doors and many rooms for many different kinds of people. This house has been divided, broken up, ruined. I have no business with what is there now. I am used to living in a house, not in cabins.

Maar de zee is eeuwig, rein en onberoerd door het kinderlijke en akelige spel van de mensen. Men heeft uitzicht in de wijde oneindigheid van hemel en water en vergeet. De wind, die de hakenkruisvlag laat wapperen, heeft geen weet van haar. De golf waarin ze weerspiegeld wordt kan niet helpen dat ze wordt ontwijd. Zo dwaas zijn de mensen dat ze zelfs in het aangezicht van deze eeuwigheden niet tot ontzag worden gedwongen.

Wir saßen im Wartesaal dritter Klasse, umtobt vom Lärm der Betrunkenen, und sprachen leise und verstanden dennoch jedes Wort, denn wir hörten mit den Herzen, nicht mit den Ohren.

There is really nothing that people get used to so readily as miracles, once they have experienced them two or three times.

Er weckt in mir die Sehnsucht, und obwohl er sich nach Feldern seht und ich nach Straßen, steckt er mich an. Es ist so wie mit den Liedern der Heimat: wenn einer sein Volkslied anstimmt, singt der andere sein eigenes, und die verschiedenen Melodien werden ähnlich, und alle sind nur wie verschiedene Instrumente einer Kapelle.

Des Menschen Heimweh erwacht draußen, es wächst und wächst, wenn keine Mauern es beengen.

Sunday is the bridge to the forgotten and discarded Holies of the world . . .

God had bestowed fertility on his loins, equanimity on his heart and poverty on his hands.

She looked like the dangerous proprietress of all the cushions and pillows.

Anyone deserves the West who arrives with fresh energy to break up the deadly, antiseptic boredom of its civilization, prepared to undergo the quarantine that we prescribe for immigrants. We do not realize that our whole life has become a quarantine, and that all our countries have become barracks and concentration camps, admittedly with all the modern conveniences.

Oggi tutti parlano la stessa, falsa lingua, e tutte le cose hanno le stesse ma false denominazioni.

Die gefährlichste aller Krankheiten ist die Frau

And so the widow married the periodically demented Taussig. She needed money, and he was less trouble than a baby.

And the world was not what it had been. It was at an end. And it was in the disposition of these things that, barely an hour before its end, the valleys and the young and the fools would all be in the right, while the mountains and the old and the wise would all be in the wrong.

And his fondness of people matched his low opinion of them.

It was quite obvious, it was, as people say, as clear as day, that Lieutenant Trotta, the grandson of the hero of Solferino, was partly bringing about the doom of others, partly being pulled under by those who were themselves going down, and, in any case, that he was one of those unhappy beings on whom an evil power had cast its evil eye.

Menuchim, Mendel's son, will grow healthy. There will not be many of his like in Israel. Pain will make him wise, ugliness kind, bitterness gentle, and illness strong. His eyes will be far and deep, his ears clear and full of echoes. His mouth will be silent, but when he opens his lips, they will herald good things.

It wasn't till much later — long after the Great War, which people call the "World War," and in my view rightly, and not for the usual reason, that the whole world was involved in it, but rather because as a result of it we lost a whole world, our world.

People today would hardly understand me if I started writing about freedom and honour ... Nowadays, silence is the better policy. I am writing purely to obtain clarity for myself, and, so to speak, 'pro nomine dei.' May He forgive me my sin!

No one is as cautious as an elderly mocker, especially when he knows how sensitive the local press and rotary club are.

He had lived long enough to know that it is foolish to tell the truth

Of course, it's the things you're not told that arouse your interest. The gaps in the news are the interesting bits.

Next to the old man's dark gravity, the boy's jingling colorfulness seemed even noisier and more radiant. At