Quotes from Joseph Roth

When I leave the hotel the porter stands beside the revolving door, primed to greet me, like a talking fork.

The woman who had escaped with her life now wept for the loss of her umbrella and was not at all grateful that her limbs were intact.

His round cheeks are of a red that seems to glow from within, as if he had a lit candle in his mouth like a paper lantern at a summer fete.

An indescribable sadness emanated from the white splendour of the staircase and balustrade; the blood-red, now almost black splendour of the carpets. The huge palms in their huge pots looked like they had recently arrived from the cemetery. Their dark green leaves also looked blackish, like wizened, perished weapons from olden days.

But the policeman radiates the calm and ease of a traffic light;

Sometimes the district captain swung his cane slightly; it hinted at an exuberance that knows where to stop.

He had lost his meticulous sense of the passing of time ever since he had given up several old habits. For after all, the hours and the days were meant precisely to maintain those habits, and now the hours and the days resembled empty vessels that could no longer be filled and need not be bothered with anymore.

But our tram needs its overhead wires, and the wires need long, bare, wooden poles, with a couple of china pots flowering at the top end, for purposes of electricity. A caricature of a snowdrop.

It's as though the inhabitants of the cities were outdistanced by the wisdom and the aspirations of the cities themselves. Things have a better feeling for the future than people do. People feel historically, i.e. retrospectively. Walls, streets, wires, chimneys feel prospectively. People get in the way of progress. They hang sentimental weights on the winged feet of time.

The calendrical harshness of nature is nothing to the boundless cruelty of history.

Carl Joseph turned red. It seemed as if his father, the rain, the clocks, people, time, and nature itself were determined to make his trip even more difficult. On those afternoons when he had managed to visit the living Frau Slama, he had also listened for the golden stroke of the bells, as impatient as today, but intent on not finding the sergeant in. Those afternoons seemed buried behind many decades. Death overshadowed and concealed them, Death

He wore a gleaming top hat. He had a pomaded, uptwirled black moustache. He looked like a first-class funeral.

The conductor was eating a young ladies' cinema nibble with a rigid, humourless expression, as though it was the doorstop or hunk of sausage that would have accorded with his personality.

Actors, who relate their woes in many clever sentences and with much waving of hands and rolling of eyes—they should be made to ride in the cars for passengers with heavy loads, to learn that a slightly bent hand can hold in it the misery of all time, and that the quiver of an eyelid can be more moving than a whole evening full of crocodile tears.

But the sound of despair is never pleasant; it sounds suspiciously like lying.

He took the Captain as he was, and was fond of him, with his cheery heartlessness, his incapacity to think beyond a couple of thoughts, for which his skull was far too roomy, his insignificant love affairs and childish infatuations, and the pointless and unconnected remarks that came out of his mouth, seemingly at random. He was a mediocre officer, who didn't care about his comrades, his men, his career.

De rails strekten zich uit tot ver in de wereld, als een ijzeren net omspanden ze de aarde.

Taittinger pondered, but he was well aware that no amount of pondering had yet helped him to a sensible conclusion.

De wolken konden zich elk moment ontladen. Kleiner leek de onmetelijkheid van de atmosfeer en dichter bij de wereld; de hemel hing verlangend boven de aarde, klaar om deze te omarmen en te bevruchten.

Die Schatten waren eben Körper geworden und warfen eigene Schatten.

Stellen wir die Vernunft in den Dienst dessen, wozu sie uns gegeben ist: nämlich in den Dienst der Liebe.«

Allora, prima della grande guerra, all'epoca in cui ebbero luogo i fatti di cui si narra in queste pagine, non era ancora indifferente se un uomo viveva o moriva. Quando qualcuno spariva dalla schiera terrestre non veniva subito rimpiazzato da un altro affinché il morto venisse dimenticato: restava un vuoto, e i testimoni vicini e lontani del declino ammutolivano alla vista di quel vuoto.

Sobre los campos, a ambos lados de la carretera, se derramaba la niebla como si fuera plomo derretido, simulando el mar y la inmensidad. Por eso, las sombrereras, las personas, las conversaciones y el coche de punto resultaban tan insustanciales y ridículos. Llegué a creer que en verdad a ambos lados se encontraba el mar y me sorprendió su calma.

Und Herr von Trotta glich einem Virtuosen, in dem das Feuer erloschen, in dessen Seele es taub und leer geworden ist und dessen Finger nur noch in kalter, seit Jahren erworbener Dienstfertigkeit dank ihrem eigenen, toten Gedächtnis richtige Klänge erzeugen.