Boleslaw Prus (1847 – 1912)
Polish journalist and novelist known as the leading representative of realism in 19th-century Polish literature.
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There are great crimes in the world, but perhaps the greatest is to kill a love.
Nature has done well and wisely, in not permitting a man to live forever and in bringing into the world ever new generations. An old person is a used-up machine [... He] has too many dogmas to [...] easily [...] believe in a new truth [...]; too many sympathies and antipathies [...] for him to come to love something unfamiliar; [...] too many habits to be able to settle on new ways. Let us add suspiciousness — the fruit of bitter experiences; a pessimism inseparable from all manner of disappointments; and finally, a general decline of powers from exhaustion [...].
In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all...
Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient.
True patriotism doesn't only consist in loving an ideal country, but — in loving, studying and working for the real elements of the country that are its land, community, people and all their wealth.
For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others.
Don't think about happiness. If it doesn't come, there's no disappointment; if it does come, it's a surprise.
A scoundrel will be a scoundrel, even with two university degrees.
Folly is as great as the sea, it will compass anything.
A life whose beginning we do not remember, and whose end we do not know.
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