Quotes from Johan Huizinga

In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science.

These are strange times. Reason, which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it, now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution.

If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.

All play means something.

Our point of departure must be the conception of an almost childlike play-sense expressing itself in various play-forms, some serious, some playful, but all rooted in ritual and productive of culture by allowing the innate human need of rhythm, harmony, change, alternation, contrast and climax, etc., to unfold in full richness.

The eternal gulf between being and idea can only be bridged by the rainbow of imagination.

To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write.

The word "school" has a curious history behind it. Meaning originally "leisure" it has now acquired precisely the opposite sense of systematic work and training, as civilization restricted the free disposal of the young man's time more and more and herded larger and larger classes of the young to a daily life of severe application from childhood onwards.

The outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings.

Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest". Thus

I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write.

Aki tökéletesen okos és komoly, az képtelen élni. Minél jobban eltávolodik tÅ'lem, Balgaságtól valaki, annál kevésbé él. Ugyan miért, mi okból csókolgatjuk, ölelgetjük a kisgyermekeket, ha nem azért, mert olyan csodálatosan balgák még. S mi más teszi az ifjúságot oly vonzóvá?

Play is battle and battle is play.

real civilization cannot exist in the absence of a certain play-element, for civilization presupposes limitation and mastery of the self, the ability not to confuse its own tendencies with the ultimate and highest goal, but to understand that it is enclosed within certain bounds freely accepted.

The whole functioning of the mediaeval University was profoundly agonistic and ludic. The everlasting disputations which took the place of our learned discussions in periodicals, etc., the solemn ceremonial which is still such a marked feature of University life, the grouping of scholars into nationes, the divisions and subdivisions, the schisms, the unbridgeable gulfs—all these are phenomena belonging to the sphere of competition and play-rules. Erasmus

Megértettem, hogy a tanulásnak soha sincs vége, s olyan folyamatról van szó, amelyet szinte minden nap újra kell kezdenünk.

Minden hÅ'stett forrása a háború, a legbalgább dolog a világon.

A bölcsesség úgy áramlik a balgasághoz, mint az ész az érzelmekhez. S a világban sokkal több az érzelem, mint az ész. Ami az életet mozgásban tartja, az élet forrása a balgaság. Mert mi egyéb a szerelem? Miért házasodik az ember, ha nem balgaságból, mely soha nem ismer akadályt? Minden élvezet, minden szórakozás csak a balgaság f?szere.

Aki az élet tragédiáit bölcs belátással akarná végigcsinálni, azonnal megfosztaná magát az élettÅ'l. Csakis a balgaság nyújt vigaszt: eltévelyedni, tévedni, tudatlannak lenni nem más, mint embernek lenni.

An abundance of pictorial fancy, after all, furnished the simple mind quite as much matter for deviating from pure doctrine as any personal interpretation of Holy Scripture.

A népnyelv e kifinomult szellem számára mindent túl közvetlenné, túl személyessé, túl reálissá tett volna. Szüksége volt arra a homályos, távolságtartó, könny? fátyolra, amelyet a latin nyelv vont a dolgok köré.

A bölcsesség kezdete az önismeret.

A tudat, hogy szavunk az egész világhoz azonnal eljuthat, olyan ösztönzés, mely öntudatlanul is hatással van a megnyilatkozás módjára, s olyan gazdagság is egyben, melyet csak a legnagyobb szellemóriások viselhetnek el büntetlenül.

From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment.