Quotes from Henryk Sienkiewicz

that the greater philosopher a man is, the more difficult it is for him to answer the foolish questions of common people;

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.

I still seem to hear Sniatynski's words: "Do not philosophize her away, as you have philosophized away your abilities and your thirty-five years of life." I know it leads to nothing, I know it is wrong, but I do not know how not to think. 13

For when a man is once in a book-shop curiosity seizes him to look here and there.

What a strange power there is in woman! She comes in contact with a genius without portfolio, an exceptionally useless implement like me, and then, without any preaching on her part, he feels himself in duty bound to do all sorts of things he never dreamed of doing before. The

The world has robbed me of my love, time has dried up hatred, and as the living individual must feel something, I live upon what remains to me. I must also say that he who feels and lives thus does not get a surfeit of happiness.

Thoughts like mine are not reckoned among the delights of life. It is like the dog trying to catch his tail; he does not catch anything. I do not prove anything, only tire myself; but have the satisfaction that another day has passed, or another night gone by. I

omul este ca un fluture: se înc?lzeÈ™te la soarele favorurilor, iar la prima adiere mai rece piere... chiar dac? n-ar vrea!

The Poles, though intellectual, sympathetic, brave, and gifted with high personal qualities that have made them many friends, have been always deficient in collective wisdom; and there is probably no more astonishing antithesis in Europe than the Poles as individuals and the Poles as a people.

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

He walked with solemn attention, but with calmness, feeling that since the death on Golgotha nothing equally important had happened, and that as the first death had redeemed the whole world, this was to redeem the city.

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

the ears of the prince. His guardianship over

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

It seems incredible that a man possessing so many conditions of happiness should be not only so little happy, but clearly does not see the reason why he should exist at all. It

It seemed to him that there was nothing real in that religion, but that reality in presence of it was so paltry that it deserved not the time for thought.

ground the coursing of flocks run wild.

Whoso does not play at dice will not lose property, but still people play at dice. There is in that a certain delight and destruction of the present.

I recognize, while yawning, the truth of what they say. We are mad. We are hastening to the precipice, something unknown is coming toward us out of the future, something is breaking beneath us, something is dying around us,—agreed! But we shall succeed in dying; meanwhile we have no wish to burden life, and serve death before it takes us. Life exists for itself alone, not for death.

The evening before he had been at one of Nero's feasts

PETRONIUS woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied.

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

jestem jak statek, który jeÅ›li nie wejdzie do portu, to zatonie...

Oj, pójdziewa w ?yto, BoÅ› dobra, kobieto!