Joseph Roth Quotes

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.

That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.

Anyway, I am unfitted to hold down a job anywhere unless they were to pay me for getting angry at the world." 96

[O]ur relationship with nature has become warped. You see, nature has acquired a purpose where we are concerned. Its task is to amuse us. It no longer exists for its own sake.

There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly.

The good man believed that shortsighted people were also deaf and that their spectacles would become clearer if their ears heard more sharply.

Only the small things in life are important

Von der Humanität durch Nationalität zur Bestialität.

I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.

What I see, what I see. What I see is the day in all its absurdity and triviality.

Откакто съм възрастен, вече не плача и не се смея.

… insanlar ellerini pantolonundan güçlükle çıkardılar. Ceplerinin boş olduğunu ancak o zaman gördüler.” Joseph Roth, Toplu Hikâyeler

Is a people that elects as its president an icon that has never read a book all that far away from burning books itself?

Anyone called upon to view misery will view criminality differently. All state officials should be required to spend a month serving in a homeless shelter to learn love.

Погледнах за миг нагоре и в погледа ми се съдържаше цяла тирада. Три дни непрестанно да бях говорил, нямаше да мога да ѝ кажа толкова много неща.

That is how a farmer walks across the soil in spring--and later, in summer, the traces of his steps are obscured by the billowing richness of the wheat he once sowed.

Uno se pierde en la vida diaria como si entrara en un bosque. Se encuentra gente, se la pierde de nuevo, como los árboles pierden sus hojas.

A moving shadow means more to us than a body at rest. We are no longer taken in by a fixed grin. We know that only death has a rictus.

Our living room had a clock in it that used to clear its throat before striking the hours. He is that harrumphing.

On Sundays the world is as bright and empty as a balloon.

Our grandfathers didn't leave us much strength, not enough strength to live with, but just about enough to die a meaningless death. Ach!

His heart was pounding. But his soul was easy.

If someone had the ability to sit at every table at once, he would hear nothing but good about himself, and yet even such contortions would pale in comparison to those of the others.

Morning birdsong filled the room. For all his high opinion of birds, privileged among God's creatures, still, deep in his heart, the Emperor did not trust them, just as he did not trust artists.

Отнесено към живота на народите, това означава: те напразно търсят така наречените национални добродетели, които са още по-съмнителни от индивидуалните. Затова мразя нациите и националните държави.

I am alone. My heart beats only for myself. The strikers mean nothing to me. I have nothing in common with the mob, nor with individuals. I am a cold person. In the war I did not feel I was part of my company. We all lay in the same mud and waited for the same death. But I could think only about my own life and death. I would step over corpses and it oftened saddened me that I could feel no pain.

In no time, the platoon were on their feet in front of him, formed up into two ranks, and it struck him suddenly, and probably for the first time in his military career, that these men with their drilled precision were dead parts of dead machines that didn't produce anything.

Astonishing, really, that they still look human. They ought to look like megaphones, like screams, like brutal desires, like beery ecstasies... like decadent barism. But the unconscious drive to remain in God's image seems to be so strong that not even the six-day races can quite eradicate it.

Er war so einfach und untadelig wie seine Konduitenliste, und nur der Zorn, der ihn manchmal ergriff, hätte einen Kenner der Menschen ahnen lassen, daß auch in der Seele des Hauptmanns Trotta die nächtlichen Abgründe dämmerten, in denen die Stürme schlafen und die unbekannten Stimmen namenloser Ahnen.

So they bring our poor Andreas into the vestry, and unfortunately he's no longer capable of speech, all he can do is reach for the left inside pocket of his jacket where he has the money he owes the little creditress, and he says: 'Miss Thérèse!' - and he sighs once, and he dies. May God grant us all, all of us drinkers, such a good and easy death!

Засаждам преживяванията си като диви лози и ги наблюдавам как растат.

„Er übertraf die Erwartungen, die er niemals auf sich gesetzt hatte

Voglia Dio concedere a tutti noi,a noi bevitori,una morte così lieve e bella

Somebody cracks a joke, a whole row laughs, one witticism sets off another, and, like matches, they flare up and burn down.

A skyscraper is the incarnate rebellion against the supposedly unattainable; against the mystery of altitude, against the otherworldliness of the cerulean.

And in the evening concealed fluorescent tubes light the room so evenly that it is no longer illuminated, it is a pool of luminosity.

It is the - actually profoundly unartistic - impulse to produce exterior likeness rather than inner truth: the same impulse as naturalistic photograpy and the "copy.

Because human nature will not deny its weaknesses, even where it is seemingly in the process of overcoming them.

Ora toda a gente entende sempre palavrões bem arrotados

As he spoke he stroked both sides of his mutton-chop whiskers as if he wished to caress simultaneously both halves of the Monarchy

She looked like the dangerous proprietress of all the cushions and pillows.

Vede, caro amico, la natura non è mai tanto benigna come quando ci regala un piccolo difetto. Se fossi venuto al mondo senza imperfezioni, probabilmente non avrei imparato niente.

There is really nothing that people get used to so readily as miracles, once they have experienced them two or three times.

Confronted with the truly microscopic, all loftiness is hopeless, completely meaningless. The diminutive of the parts is more impressive than the monumentality of the whole. I no longer have any use for the sweeping gestures of heroes on the global stage. I'm going for a walk.

Domestic interior design is a fraught affair. It makes me hanker for the mild and soothing and tasteless red velvet interiors in which people lived so undiscriminatingly no more than twenty years ago. It was unhygienic, dark, cool, probably stuffed full of dangerous bacteria, and pleasant.

E il mondo non era più il vecchio mondo. Tramontava. Ed era nell'ordine delle cose che un'ora prima del suo tramonto le valli avessero ragione dei monti, i giovani dei vecchi, gli stolti dei savi.

Therefore, the very large department store should not be viewed as a sinful undertaking, as, for example, the Tower of Babel. It is, rather, proof of the inability of the human race of today to be extravagant. It even builds skyscrapers: and the consequence this time isn't a great flood, but just a shop...

Many of us served in the war, many died. We have written for Germany, we have died for Germany. We have spilled our blood for Germany in two ways: the blood that runs in our veins, and the blood with which we write. We have sung Germany, the real Germany! And that is why today we are being burned by Germany!

The weeping willows, on the other hand, are evocative of death. They are a little contrived, a little exaggerated, still green in the middle of all the colors of autumn, and there is a human pathos to them.

He felt light, lighter than ever in all his years. He had severed all relationships. It occurred to him that he had been alone for years. He had been alone since that moment when desire had ceased between his woman and himself. He was alone -alone. Wife and children had surrounded him and had hindered him from bearing his pain. Like useless poultices that do not aid healing, they had lain upon his wounds and had merely covered them.

Lieutenant Trotta wasn't experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written.

In those days before the Great War when the events narrated in this book took place, it had not yet become a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When one of the living had been extinguished another did not at once take his place in order to obliterate him: there was a gap where he had been, and both close and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they became aware of his gap. When fire had eaten away a house from the row of others in a street, the burnt-out space remained long empty. Masons worked slowly and cautiously. Close neighbors and casual passers-by alike, when they saw the empty space, remembered the aspect and walls of the vanished house. That was how things were then. Everything that grew took its time in growing and everything that was destroyed took a long time to be forgotten. And everything that had once existed left its traces so that in those days people lived on memories, just as now they live by the capacity to forget quickly and completely.

Хубаво е, когато майките ни не са у дома, майките с недоверчиво питащи очи, тъжни и разплакани, строги и страшни, и все пак тъжни, клетите ни майки, които нищо не разбират и все ни се карат и които сме принудени да лъжем. Няма на кого да даваме обяснения и да изпитваме страх от лъжата, страх от принудителната лъжа и от разкриването ѝ.

Carl Joseph kept silent. It was as if there were no answer to Dr. Demant’s question in the whole big wide world. One could have wasted years searching for an answer, as if human speech were exhausted and dried up for all eternity.

It wasn’t till much later — long after the Great War, which people call the “World War,” and in my view rightly, and not for the usual reason, that the whole world was involved in it, but rather because as a result of it we lost a whole world, our world.

I might be capable of making figures that have heart, conscience, passion, emotion and decency. But there's no call for that at all in the world. People are only interested in monsters and freaks, so I give them their monsters. Monsters are what they want!

Отзвучала е сладката музика на неизвестността, хубавият примамлив напев на начеващия живот, избледняла е бляскавата далнина на безкрайните дни, охладняла е закрилящата топлина на младостта. Завършен е краткият ни път и чужд ни е мъжът, с всеки изминал ден става все по-чужд.

And the world was not what it had been. It was at an end. And it was in the disposition of these things that, barely an hour before its end, the valleys and the young and the fools would all be in the right, while the mountains and the old and the wise would all be in the wrong.

Among the writers he was reading when he wrote these stories in the 1950s—and he was reading all the time, all kinds of books, dozens and dozens of them—were David Riesman, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Randall Jarrell, Sigmund Freud, Paul Goodman, William Styron, C. Wright Mills, Martin Buber, George Orwell, Suzanne Langer, F. R. Leavis, David Daiches, Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, Ralph Ellison, Erich Fromm, Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas, Sean O’Casey, e. e. cummings—who collectively represented a republic of discourse in which he aspired to

The escalator seems to me to typify this: It leads us up, by climbing on our behalf. Yes, it doesn't even climb, it flies. Each step carries its shopper aloft, as though afraid he might change his mind. It takes us up to merchandise we might not have bothered to climb an ordinary flight of steps for.

Gradually too, Trotta's disappointment was replaced by a sweet melancholy. He made a pact with his sadness. Everything in the world was as sad as it could be, and at the very heart of this wretched world was the Lieutenant. It was for him that the frogs were bruiting so piteously tonight, and the pain-filled crickets were waiting on his behalf. It was for him that the spring night was filled with such a sweet and easy sadness, for him that the stars were positioned so unattainably high in the sky, and it was to him alone that their light blinked so longingly and vainly. The unending pain of the world fitted itself to Trotta's hurt.

Only on Sundays do you come across political scout troops with sandals, walking sticks, and knives. In the woods they do round dances, they rave about nature, and have big brawls with each other. It's a strange, baffling young generation. It covet's the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, but not his shy piety and love of nature.

So war es damals! Alles, was wuchs, brauchte viel Zeit zum Wachsen; und alles, was unterging, brauchte lange Zeit, um vergessen zu werden. Aber alles, was einmal vorhanden gewesen war, hatte seine Spuren hinterlassen, und man lebte dazumal von den Erinnerungen, wie man heutzutage lebt von der Fähigkeit, schnell und nachdrücklich zu vergessen.

Така става с хората, които се поддават на изкушението на дявола: в пъклените си дела те надминават дори дявола.

He had lived long enough to know that it is foolish to tell the truth

Quand on tombait malade, il fallait mourir. La maladie n'était qu'une tentative de la nature pour habituer l'homme à mourir.

De rails strekten zich uit tot ver in de wereld, als een ijzeren net omspanden ze de aarde.

Next to the old man’s dark gravity, the boy’s jingling colorfulness seemed even noisier and more radiant. At

Sometimes the district captain swung his cane slightly; it hinted at an exuberance that knows where to stop.

Every year, on the Emperor's birthday, he makes a resolution to begin a new life and not get into debt. And so he gets drunk. And comes home late at night, stands in the kitchen with drawn sword, and commands an entire regiment. The pots are platoons, the teacups are units, the plates are companies. Simon Demant is a colonel, a colonel in the service of Franz Joseph I.

But they bear the burden of being unpopular as proof of their importance - and these eminences turn the suspicion that less elevated customers are careful to disguise as courtesy into naked contempt and disdain. All the people one doesn't need right now are - for the person who will need them in a year's time - no more than air which he breathes but doesn't need to see.

Never yet has such furious movement brought in its train such slowness in the passage of time. Everything is spinning, only time stands still. The rotation goes on forever. And when the wheel finally stops spinning, the riders in their relief forget that they have paid money to enjoy themselves, and only had the fright of their lives. They feel glad to have gotten out alive.

De wolken konden zich elk moment ontladen. Kleiner leek de onmetelijkheid van de atmosfeer en dichter bij de wereld; de hemel hing verlangend boven de aarde, klaar om deze te omarmen en te bevruchten.

Count Chojnicki was curious. No other passion than curiosity sent him out into the world, drew him to the tables of the great gaming halls, sequestered him behind the walls of his old hunting pavilion, sat him down on the parliamentarians' benches, determined that he would return home every spring, compelled him to throw his regular parties, and prevented him from cutting his own throat. It was curiosity that kept him alive.

The world to come will be like this triangular railroad junction, raised to some unknown power. The earth has lived through several evolutionary stages - but following always natural laws. It is presently experiencing a new one, which follows constructive, conscious, and no less elemental laws. Regret for the passing of the old forms is like the grief of some antediluvian creature for the disappearance of a prehistoric habitat.

Gradually she got used to seeing men come and go: a race of childish giants, resembling clumsy mammoth insects, fleeting and yet weighty; an army of awkward fools who tried to flutter with leaden wings; warriors who believed that they had conquered when they were despised, that they possessed when they were ridiculed, that they had enjoyed when they had barely tasted; a barbaric horde, for whom she nevertheless waited lifelong.

- J'aurais bien dit encore, déclara le maire, que M. von Trotta ne pouvait pas survivre à l'Empereur. Ne croyez-vous pas, docteur? - Je ne sais pas. Je crois qu'ils ne pouvaient, ni l'un ni l'autre, survivre à l'Autriche.

En quoi le naufrage du monde, dont il pouvait à présent distinguer la venue, plus nettement que, jadis, le prophétique Chojnicki le concernait-il? Son fils était mort. Ses fonctions étaient terminés. Son monde avait sombré.

Всичко в живота остарява и се износва: и думи, и ситуации. Всички подходящи моменти веднъж вече са се появявали. Всички думи веднъж вече са били казани. Не мога да повтарям думи и ситуации. Все едно постоянно съм облече в износени дрехи.

…мислите ѝ отново се върнаха. Бяха я дебнали в неподозирана близост, като рояк мухи я нападнаха: дребни страхове, скокливи мъчителни грижи, зловещо стрелкащи се беди, заплахите на утрешния и следващите дни, безмилостни образи на безмилостни дни, и ужасът се сключи като стегнат ярем над потрепващата шия. Отлетяла бе сладостната музика на унеса, приятният, приспиващ напев на забравата, помръкна светлата шир на безгрижната пустота, изстина закрилящата топлина на слънчевия ден.

Although the noise of the chattering clientele is much more significant than the topics of their chatter, it does finally constitute that type of social and indistinct expression that we refer to as rhubarb. The very particular volume in which people tell each other their news seems to generate all by itself that acoustic chiaroscuro, a sounding murk, in which every communication seems to lose its edges, truth projects the shadow of a lie, and a statement seems to resemble its opposite.

I am not a man of my time. In fact I find it hard not to declare myself its enemy. Not, as I often remark, that I fail to understand it. My comment is merely a pious one. Because I am easy-going I prefer not to be aggressive or hostile and therefore I say that I do not understand those matters which I ought to say I hate or despise. I have sharp ears but I pretend to be hard of hearing, finding as I do that is more elegant to feign this handicap than to admit that I have heard some vulgar sound

There still exists - even today - a yearning, a nostalgia for European solidarity, a solidarity of European culture. Regrettably, solidarity itself no longer exists, except in hearts, in consciences, in the minds of a few great men at the heart of each nation. European consciousness - or what one might call a ‘cultural European awareness’ - had been on the wane for years ever since the awakening of national identity. You could say that patriotism has killed Europe. Patriotism is particularism. ... However, European culture goes back much further than the nations of Europe. Greece, Rome and Israel, Christendom and Renaissance, the French Revolution and Germany’s eighteenth century, the supranational music of Austria and Slavic poetry: these are the forces that have sculpted the face of Europe. All these forces have forged European solidarity and the European cultural consciousness. None of these forces know national boundaries. All are the enemies of that barbarian power: so-called ‘national pride’.

Es ist eines der Geheimnisse der Muetter: sie verzichten niemals, ihre Kinder wiederzusehn, ihre totgeglaubten nicht und auch nicht ihre wirklich toten; und wenn es moeglich waehre dass ein totes Kind wiederauferstuende vor seiner Mutter, wuerde sie es in ihre Arme nehmen, so selbstverstaendlich, als waere es nicht aus dem Jenseits sondern aus einem der fernen Gegenden des Diesseits heimgekehrt. Eine Mutter erwarted die Wiederkehr ihres Kindes immer: ganz gleichgueltig, ob es in ein fernes Land gewandert ist, in ein nahes oder den Tod.

God is with the vanquished, not with the victors! At a time when His Holiness, the infallible Pope of Christendom, is concluding a peace agreement, a Concordat, with the enemies of Christ, when the Protestant's are establishing a "German church" and censoring the Bible, we descendants of the old Jews, the forefathers of European culture, are the only legitimate German representatives of that culture. Thanks to inscrutable divine wisdom, we are physically incapable of betraying it to the heathen civilization of poison gases, to the ammonia-breathing, Germanic war god.

Als hätte es noch eines Beweises bedurft, dass wird das geduldigste unter den Völkern der Welt sind – oder boshaft und medizinisch ausgedrückt: ein masochistisches. Wie in der Geschichte Berlins Absolutismus und Korruption, Tyrannei und Spekulation, Prügelstrafe und Bodenwucher, Grausamkeit und Gewinnsucht, Maskerade einer harten Korrektheit und windiger Schacher Schulter an Schulter Fundamente graben und Straßen bauen, und wie also aus Unkenntnis, Geschmacklosigkeit, Unglück, Bosheit und nur in selten günstigem Zufall die Hauptstadt des Deutschen Reiches entsteht, erzählt in fesselnder Weise Werner Hegemanns Buch ‚Das steinerne Berlin’.

This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nations-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. The Monarchy, our Monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian peoples. Our Emperor is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the Grace of God and on the faith of the peoples in the Grace of God… The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God.

Of course the merchandise appears to be cheaper. Because where there are so many things close together, they can hardly help not thinking of themselves as precious. In their own eyes they shrink, and they lower their prices, and they become humble, for humility in good expresses itself as cheapness. And since there are also so many shoppers crowded together, the goods make less of a challenge or an appeal to them; and so they too become humble. If the very large department store looked to begin with like a work of hubris, it comes to seem merely an enormous container for human smalless and modesty; an enormous confession of earthly cheapness.

Амбициозен е плебеят. Истинският аристократ е анонимен. Съществува някаква сила във вродения аристократизъм, която е по-мощна от блясъка на славата и успеха, от величието на победителя. Амбицията, както казах, е качество на плебея. Той няма време. Не може да дочака почестите, властта, признанието, славата. А аристократът има време да изчака, дори да остане на заден план.

Maar de zee is eeuwig, rein en onberoerd door het kinderlijke en akelige spel van de mensen. Men heeft uitzicht in de wijde oneindigheid van hemel en water en vergeet. De wind, die de hakenkruisvlag laat wapperen, heeft geen weet van haar. De golf waarin ze weerspiegeld wordt kan niet helpen dat ze wordt ontwijd. Zo dwaas zijn de mensen dat ze zelfs in het aangezicht van deze eeuwigheden niet tot ontzag worden gedwongen.

Above all there's a lack of personal discipline, manners, decorum, natural discretion. If everyone causes their own individual catastrophes, how can there fail to be more general catastrophes? After all, the passengers on a bus or streetcar make up a community of a kind. But they don't see it that way, not even in a moment of danger. As they see it they are bound always to be the other's enemy: for political, social, all sorts of reasons. Where so much hate has been bottled up, it is vented on inanimate things, and provokes the celebrated perversity of inanimate things. Sending experts into other countries won't help much, so long as each individual refuses to work out his own personal traffic plan. There is a wisdom in the accident of language by which there is a single word, "traffic," for movement in the streets, and for people's dealings with one another.

The books were all first editions, some autographed by the authors. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, published in 1961; Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948); John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1960); Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952); Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961); Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus (1959); William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967); Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1929); Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965); and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

—You know, I’m no patriot, but I love my countrymen. A country, a fatherland, there’s something abstract about that. But a countryman is something concrete. I can’t possibly love every wheat and maize field, every pine forest, every swamp, every Polish lady and gentleman, but show me one field, one copse, one swamp, one individual, well, 'à la bonheur'! That’s something I can see and understand, that speaks to me in a language I am familiar with, that — because of its singularity — can be dear to me. And beyond that, there are persons I term my countrymen, even if they happen to have been born in China or Persia or Africa. Some are dear to me from the moment I first clap eyes on them. A true ‘countryman is immediately identifiable. And if he happens to be someone from my own patch as well, then, as I say, 'à la bonheur'! But there’s an element of chance there, the other is simple providence. He raised his glass, and called out: —Here’s to my countrymen, wherever they happen to hail from!

Daar is een kerkhof, vol ijzeren kruisen, niet die, die op de borst hangen, maar de echte, die op grafheuvels staan. Dit is het Duitse kerkhof bij Bovincourt. Daar liggen 40.000 onbekende soldaten. Daar komen telkens achtergeblevenen, die weggeblevenen zoeken. Daar loopt de Franse bewaker rond, en drukt iedere Duitser die komt de hand en vraagt aan iedere Duitser: 'Kameraad, waarom hebben we gevochten?' - Eeuwige vraag van alle bewakers van oorlogskerkhoven. Je wordt pacifist te midden van 40.000 onbekende dode soldaten.

Totally Biased List of Tookie’s Favorite Books Ghost-Managing Book List The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah Beloved, by Toni Morrison The Through, by A. Rafael Johnson Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders Savage Conversations, by LeAnne Howe The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth Songs for Discharming, by Denise Sweet Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, by Gerald Vizenor Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haine Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai

Professionals who've spent their energy teaching masterpieces, the few of us still engrossed by literature's scrutiny of things, have no excuse for finding betrayal anywhere but at the heart of history. History from top to bottom. World history, family history, personal history. It's a very big subject, betrayal. Just think of the Bible. What's that book about? The master story situation of the Bible is betrayal. Adam—betrayed. Esau—betrayed. The Shechemite—betrayed. Judah—betrayed. Joseph—betrayed. Moses—betrayed. Samson—betrayed. Samuel—betrayed. David—betrayed. Uriah—betrayed. Job—betrayed. Job betrayed by whom? By none other than God himself. And don't forget the betrayal of God. God betrayed. Betrayed by our ancestors at every turn.

Cet empire sombrera fatalement. Dès que notre Empereur fermera les yeux, nous nous disloquerons en cent morceaux. Les Balkans seront plus puissants que nous. Toutes les nations organiseront leurs sales petits États et les Juifs eux-mêmes proclameront un roi en Palestine. Vienne sent déjà la sueur des démocrates, et je ne supporte plus la Ringstrasse. Les ouvriers ont des drapeaux rouges et ne veulent plus travailler. Le bourgemestre de Vienne est un pieux gardien d'immeuble. Les curés suivent déjà le peuple, on joue des saloperies juives et il ne se passe pas une semaine sans qu'un Hongrois, fabricant de W.C., ne devienne baron. Je vous le dis, messieurs, si les fusils ne partent pas dès maintenant, c'en est fait. Nous le verrons encore.

Perquè tal com l'amor i la justícia provenen de l'absència de temor, en canvi, l'odi neix del temor, i la injustícia neix del temor. Ara bé, el temor és el fill de l'Anticrist. Ens referim al temor de l'ésser humà envers els seus iguals. El lleó no tem el lleó, el tigre no tem el tigre, el xai no tem el xai, el bou no tem el bou, el corb no tem el corb, el barb no tem el barb, si no és que l'un amenaça l'altre. Per tal que regni el temor entre un ésser i un altre de la mateixa mena, cal que existeixi una enemistat entre tots dos per un motiu determinat. En canvi, l'ésser humà tem l'ésser humà sense que hi hagi cap motiu, sinó que el temor de l'ésser humà cap al seu igual no és pas la conseqüència de les seves enemistats i les seves guerres, sinó que n'és la causa.

- Je ne comprends pas... comment la monarchie n'existerait-elle plus? - Si on prends les choses à la lettre, elle dure toujours, naturellement. Nous avons encore une armée - le compte désigna le sous-lieutenant - et des fonctionnaires - le compte désigna le préfet. Mais son corps vivant se désagrège. Elle se désagrège, elle est dèjà désagrégée. C'est un vieillard voué à la mort, dont le moindre rhume de cerveau met la vie en danger, qui mantient l'ancien trône pour la simple et miraculeuse raison qu'il peut encore s'y tenir assis. Pour combien de temps encore, pour combien de temps? Cette époque veut d'abord se créer des états nationaux indépendants. On ne croit plus en Dieu. La nouvelle réligion, c'est le nationalisme. Les peuples ne vont plus à l'église. Ils fréquentent des groupement nationaux. La monarchie, notre monarchie, est fondée sur la pitié; sur la croyance que Dieu a choisi les Habsbourg pour régner sur tant et tant de nations chrétiennes. Notre Empereur est un frère séculier du pape, il est Sa Majesté apostolique, impériale et royale, aucune autre Majesté n'est "apostolique", aucune autre Majesté d'Europe ne dépend, comme lui, de la grâce divine et de la foi des peuples en la grâce divine. L'empereur de l'Allemagne continuera toujours de régner, même si Dieu l'abandonne, il régnera, le cas écheant, par la grâce de la nation. L'empereur d'Autriche, lui, ne peut régner sans Dieu. Mais maintenant, Dieu l'a abandonné!

Между другото: невинаги цялата тази благотворителност се раждаше от доброта на сърцето, тя беше един от неписаните закони на някои благороднически семейства. Възможно е преди векове техните прадеди да са правили благодеяния, да са оказвали помощ и подкрепа само от любов към народа. Но постепенно със смяната на поколенията тази доброта бе застинала и се бе превърнала в един вид дълг и традиция. Впрочем пламенната отзивчивост на граф Морстин бе единствената му дейност и забавление. Тази отзивчивост внасяше целенасоченост и смисъл в доста безделния му живот; той, за разлика от съседите и останалите дворяни, не се интересуваше дори от лов, а освен това тя бе и неизменно , приятно доказателство за неговата власт. Когато успяваше да осигури на този будка за цигари, на онзи някое разрешително, на трети някакъв пост, на четвърти някаква аудиенция - и съвестта му, но и гордостта му бяха удовлетворени. Ако обаче не сполучеше с посредничеството за някое от протежетата си, съвестта му беше неспокойна, а гордостта му - накърнена. И той не се отказваше от начинанието, а се обръщаше към всички инстанции, докато наложеше волята си, тоест волята на протежето си. Затова населението го обичаше и почиташе. Защото народът няма никаква представа за причините, които карат един могъщ господар да помага на дребните и безсилните. Народът иска просто да вижда "добър господар" - и в детинското си доверие към могъщия народът често е по-благороден от онзи, в чието благородство наивно вярва. Най-съкровеното и благородно желание на народа е господарят му да бъде справедлив и доблестен. И той жестоко си отмъщава, ако господарите го разочароват - като дете, което строшава примерно локомотивчето си, защото то веднъж е отказало да действа. Затова на народа трябва да се дават стабилни играчки, като на децата, и справедливи господари.