Antal Szerb Quotes

#1. Because, my dear, in the spiritual life opposites meet. It's not the cold passionless ones who become great ascetics, but the most hot-blooded, people with something worth renouncing. That's why the church won't allow eunuchs to become priests.

Antal Szerb

#2. The stronger civilization becomes, the more deeply the love of death is buried in the subconscious.

Antal Szerb

#3. For love, there has to be a distance across which lovers can approach one another. The approach is of course just an illusion, because love in fact separates people. Love is a polarity.

Antal Szerb

#4. The matter could in fact have been resolved quite simply if all those round the table had been equally intelligent. But in this life that is rarely given.

Antal Szerb

#5. The sense of impending disaster hung over the garden like a chandelier.

Antal Szerb

#6. Everyone has to find his own way to die.

Antal Szerb

#7. The French by their nature had a permanent hunger for sensation. This was even more true of the eighteenth century, of which that considerable expert Victor du Bled remarked that no other age was ever so bored.

Antal Szerb

#8. We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

Antal Szerb

#9. I really dislike the sort of people who aren't like other people. It's true other people are so boring. But so are the ones who aren't like them.

Antal Szerb

#10. If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that.

Antal Szerb

#11. Nothing is more frightening than the completely inexplicable.

Antal Szerb

#12. And while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen ...

Antal Szerb

#13. In London November isn't a month, it's a state of mind.

Antal Szerb

#14. You start off as Mr X, who happens to be an engineer, and sooner or later you're just an engineer who happens to be called Mr X.

Antal Szerb

#15. It is not the business of a Queen to be human.

Antal Szerb

#16. Love preserves one moment for ever, the moment of its birth. The beloved never ages.

Antal Szerb

#17. If you spent time thinking about the future, you wouldn't be a true adventurer. An adventure is something that happens from one moment to the next; in which there is no yesterday and no tomorrow. Everything else is just petty bourgeois.

Antal Szerb