Balkan Quotes & Sayings

Ballet's image of perfection is fashioned amid a milieu of wracked bodies, fevered imaginations, Balkan intrigue and sulfurous hatreds where anything is likely, and dancers know it. — Shana Alexander

How would anyone believe that any good was to be obtained by adding the Balkan states to the already unwieldy Dual Monarchy and so increasing the Empire to a hundred million souls with differing cultures and traditions? Of course armies could be recruited and young men could die, but great States evolved only through centuries of social tradition and mutual self-interest; they were not imposed by bayonets. To believe the contrary would be as mad as the folly which had put the Archduke Maximilian on the throne of Mexico. — Miklos Banffy

In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority ... Cromwell and Robespierre ... acted likewise.. — Bertrand Russell

Bessie was News, Leaders, and Gossip; Enid was Features, Make-up and general Sub. Whenever they were at a loss for copy they would mercilessly pillage ancient copies of Punch or Home Chat. An occasional hole in the copy was filled with a ghoulish smudge - local block-making had clearly indicated that somewhere a poker-work fanatic had gone quietly out of his mind. In this way the Central Balkan Herald was made up every morning and then delivered to the composition room where the chain-gang quickly reduced it to gibberish. MINISTER FINED FOR KISSING IN PUBIC. WEDDING BULLS RING OUT FOR PRINCESS. QUEEN OF HOLLAND GIVES PANTY FOR EX-SERVICE MEN. MORE DOGS HAVE BABIES THIS SUMMER IN BELGRADE. BRITAINS NEW FLYING-GOAT. — Lawrence Durrell

Americans tote guns because they're assertive citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. They love their military because they think there's something contemptible about Europeans preening and posing as a great power when they can't even stop some nickel'n'dime Balkan genital-severers piling up hundreds of thousands of corpses on their borders. — Mark Steyn

The role of race cannot be understated in an era of fervent social Darwinism. For decades the Balkans had enacted in microcosm the racial hatreds at great-power level. In consequence the Balkan states were likely, indeed expected, periodically to blow a head gasket over racial and religious differences and threaten a major confrontation by dragging their powerful sponsors into the local mess. — Paul Ham

One person's garbage is another person's commodity. — Aleksandar Hemon

I have been informed about the death of Slobodan Milosevic. It is unfortunate and in many aspects unsatisfactory, given the countless victims of the Balkan wars, that justice now will not be able to run its course. — Jaap De Hoop Scheffer

That the Roman empire was, like all its predecessors, a form of extortion by force, an enriching of well-connected Romans (who "make a desolation and call it peace") at the expense of hapless conquered peoples, would also not have carried much weight with most readers. Hadn't Philip of Macedon's first conquest been the seizure of the Balkan gold mines? Hadn't Alexander's last planned campaign been for the sake of controlling the lucrative Arabian spice trade? How could anyone demur over such things? What would be the point of holding out against the nature of man and of the universe itself? Augustus set up in the midst of the Roman Forum a statue of himself that loomed eleven times the size of a normal man,10 and similarly awesome statues were erected in central shrines throughout the empire. Augustus was not a normal man; he was a god, deserving of worship. And, like all gods, he was terrifying. — Thomas Cahill

Congress and the American people have good reason to fear that we are heading toward another permanent garrison of Americans in a Balkan country where our mission is confused, and our exit strategy a complete mystery. — John McCain

The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths. — Aleksandar Hemon

If the Europeans want to intervene, that's their business. But if I were president, I would remove every United States soldier from the Balkan peninsula. — Pat Buchanan

Americans and Englishmen, when they become acquainted with the Balkans, feel an astonished contempt when they study the mutual enmities of Bulgarians and Serbs, of Hungarians and Rumanians. It is evident to them that these enmities are absurd and that the belief of each little nation in its own superiority has no objective basis. But most of them are quite unable to see that the national pride of a Great Power is essentially as unjustifiable as that of a little Balkan country. — Bertrand Russell

I was not prepared to play the role of singer in the camp of the warriors — Leon Trotsky

Ethan was American, and so had a great capacity for indignation, forgiveness, and a firm belief in the powers of individual action. The Balkan people were not like that. They had failed, they had faltered, and they had been mistreated, lied to, robbed from, and forgotten. Outrage was for people who thought they could make a difference. — Annie Ward

It is no wonder that Mary loves our day and age. Thanks to persecution, we are giving more to her Son than any other age or day since Calvary. The Nazis in Germany, Austria, and Poland; The Reds in all the Balkan lands, Russia, and now in China, have done more for heaven than ever did the Roman Caesars, the kings and queens of England, or the madmen of the French Revolution. They have done more for the earth, too. For while peopling heaven with martyrs, they have also spread far and wide the grace of Christ Jesus, thanks to the oneness of His mystical body. — M. Raymond

Yet it is also a tonic and an antidote to dullness to be with the Serbs. They possess the irresponsible gaiety that we traditionally connect with the Irish, with whom they have often been compared. Other less convenient sides of the Irish character are also typical in the Serbs, such as a cheerful contempt for punctuality in daily life and a ready willingness, arising clearly from politeness and good nature, to make promises that are not always fulfilled. But perhaps the most pronounced of these similarities is to be found in the songs of Serbia and Ireland. With both peoples the historic songs about the past are songs of sorrow, or noble struggles against overwhelming odds, of failure redeemed by unconquerable resolve. There is nothing strange in this combination of laughing gaiety and profound melancholy. It is often only those who are truly capable of the one emotion who also have the faculty for the other. — R.G.D. Laffan

We have taken a grave and hazardous decision to sustain the Greeks and try to make a Balkan Front. — Winston Churchill

I had always pictured the Albanian
peasants as a very fine picturesque race of men wearing spotless native costume, and slung about with fascinating looking daggers and curious weapons of all kinds, but the great majority of those I saw, more especially in the small towns, were
a very degenerate looking race indeed. — Flora Sandes

There was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war. — Gertrude Stein

What's the harm in forgetting? What does remembering do? Kugel had read that the war in the Balkans was referred to as the War of the Grandmothers; that after 50 years of peace, it was the grandmothers who reminded their offspring to hate each other, the grandmothers who reminded them of past atrocities, of indignities long gone. Never forget! shouted the grandmothers. So their grandchildren remembered, and their grandchildren died. — Shalom Auslander

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. — Sarah Waters

I told her I hated normal people and the land of the fucking free and the home of the asshole brave, and I hated God and George and all and everything. — Aleksandar Hemon

We should remember what Bismarck said in 1888: "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." Balkan — George Friedman

We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment ... In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies. — Dimitrije Tucovic

Well, that is all the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who's this Archduke man who has been murdered?"
"What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous answer to her question, which destiny was even then preparing. "Someone is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It's their normal condition and I don't really think that our papers ought to publish such shocking things. — L.M. Montgomery

Turkey is a European country, an Asian country, a Middle Eastern country, Balkan country, Caucasian country, neighbor to Africa, Black Sea country, Caspian Sea, all these. — Ahmet Davutoglu

Edin Viso's poetry and prose bear the obvious marks of dark drama-of a soul variously splayed apart and cinched back together...This is a book of psalms-at once craggy and rough as the Balkan landscape, and sublime as sunrise on the Aegean Sea. There are calluses on the palms, dried blood on the knuckles, and dirt under the fingernails of these pieces. And there is grace...Edin is a poet who knows the value of a blanket, a single orange, a moment shared...He is a man who is unafraid, and who does, in the pages before you, "take off his skin and dance in his bones.". — Stephen T. Berg