Hungarian Life Quotes & Sayings

I set free the phantoms of my imagination. — Frigyes Karinthy

If an aristocrat became bankrupt he looked to the sunshine of royal providence [ ... ] but when the nobility sank too low to qualify for royal notice, they became fraudsters, trading on the display of rank: the man would become a card-sharper or gigolo, while the woman sold herself. Actual work would have been unthinkable. It would have offended against the ancient order of things, which assigned that role to the middle classes and the peasantry. This concept is difficult to connect with our modern view of the world, but its very absurdity follows directly from the fact that everything in its old order was so firm and wonderful - with everything in its eternally appointed place and moving in fixed circles like the stars. There was no changing your lot in life at will: it was assigned to you forever, by birth. If you fell below your appointed station, you couldn't just swap it for another - you simply plummeted into the void. — Antal Szerb

You need to retain a little bit of mystery along the way or he's going to assume he's already plumbed your depths and get bored really fast. Reveal yourself slowly, when the subject comes up, and let him build his opinion of you gradually. Not only does that make you more of an enigma that he'll be dying to get to the bottom of, but it allows him to judge you on who you are right now. Let's — Eric Monroe

....one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something -- because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. 'The house I was living in when I read that book,' you think, or 'This colour reminds me of that book. — Jean Rhys

If I feel strongly, I say it. I know I can do more good by being vocal than by staying quiet. I'd have a whole lot more money if I lied, but I wouldn't enjoy spending it. — Martina Navratilova

Everything returns and renews itself. The difference now is that the rate of these returns has increased, in both space and time, in an unheard-of fashion. Now my thoughts can circle the globe in minutes. Entire passages of world history are played out in a couple of years. — Frigyes Karinthy

There are basically two kinds of people: those who have empathy and care about others and those who don't. The ones who don't are creating most of the problems in the world. — Laurence Overmire

I've learned something about kids - they don't do what you say; they do what you do. — Jennifer Lopez

The political situation was becoming increasingly volatile. The Treaty of Versailles was such a sore point. It popped up in almost any conversation. Perhaps the separation from the "Reich" (what was left of the old Germany) was more intensely felt in everyday life in our province of East Prussia than in the rest of Germany. The Treaty forced Germany to accept blame for causing the First World War. It demanded that Germany disarm, give up substantial portions of land, and pay heavy reparations to countries of the victors. No other country bore the blame or brunt of the burden as heavily as Germany. Germans viewed the terms imposed by the treaty as blatantly unfair. From our perspective, Germany was drawn into the conflict through a political alliance we had with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. We did not initiate hostilities. The fact that Europe was a political powder keg was certainly not the exclusive fault of the German Empire. I — Ulrich Karl Thomas

In the language of the day it is customary to describe a certain sort of book as "escapist" literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even have the disastrous effect on the reader of taking him happily for a few hours out of his own real life in N.W.8. Why this should be a matter for regret I do not know; nor why realism in a novel is so much admired when realism in a picture is condemned as mere photography; nor, I might add, why drink and fornication should seem to bring the realist closer to real life than, say, golf and gardening. — A.A. Milne

College girls on the road! One-night stands! Lee felt like an Austro-Hungarian emperor attended on his deathbed by flappers. He felt them stealing his life - literally going back in time and taking, through their incoherent lifestyles, the little he had struggled so hard to attain. — Nell Zink

Is it possible that power can conquer matter, that the soul makes a mightier truth than the body, that life has a meaning that survives life itself, that good survives evil as life survives death, that God, after all, is more powerful than the Devil? — Frigyes Karinthy

From the street below, the SYLK Institute building resembled a perfectly faceted aquamarine obelisk, rising from the cracked concrete and asphalt of the nation's capital city. — Jonathan Marker

This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising. — Joseph Brodsky

Now we live in fairyland. The only lightly disappointing thing about this land is that it is smaller than the real world has ever been. — Frigyes Karinthy

You know, Italian-Hungarian - no matter how linear and cool I look on the outside, I have all that energy trying to find its way through life. — Carmen Dell'Orefice

The life of the hero of the tale is, at the outset, overshadowed by bitter and hopeless struggles; one doubts that the little swineherd will ever be able to vanquish the awful Dragon with the twelve heads. And yet, ... truth and courage prevail and the youngest and most neglected son of the family, of the nation, of mankind, chops off all twelve heads of the Dragon, to the delight of our anxious hearts. This exultant victory, towards which the hero of the tale always strives, is the hope and trust of the peasantry and of all oppressed peoples. This hope helps them bear the burden of their destiny. — Gyula Illyes

I was so full of hate that there was no room in me for such feelings as love, pity, kindness or honor or decency, — Carl Panzram

He said he doesn' have it. Pick on someone your own size." You could really hear the Irish in Kiernan's voice back then. I mean, you can still hear it, but it's more of a lilt when he's older. Back then, it was a full-on brogue. — Rysa Walker

During the first six years of my life, Hungary was one of the most important components of the Habsburg dynasty's vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, but after World War I it became an independent national entity. — Georg Solti