Moldovan Quotes

Îmi jignești inteligența. Iar inteligența mea e foarte răzbunătoare. Crede-mă, nu vrei s-o jignești.

Oamenii își închipuie că, dacă ai un blog, poți scrie pe el toate tâmpeniile care-ți trec prin cap. Nimic mai fals. E limpede că nu poți scrie toate tâmpeniile, ci doar o mică parte.

Now independent, the Moldovans continue to encourage a perception of “Moldovan” as a distinct “language” from Romanian, in part because Romanians tend to dismiss their dialect as sounding uneducated.

Nu știu cât timp am rămas îmbrățișați. Mi s-a părut o veșnicie – dar probabil a fost mai puțin.

Dacă aş vrea, aş putea face tot ce vreau. Dar nu vreau.

Moldovans, most of whom will never be able to afford the products advertised—unless they sell a kidney. Joseph Epstein, in his book on envy, described the entire advertising industry as “a vast and intricate envy-producing machine.” In Moldova, all of that envy has nowhere to dissipate; it just accumulates, like so much toxic waste.

Tipa era ciudată rău. Orice persoană care nu mă place e ciudată rău.

Puţine chestii mă enervează mai tare decât cei care-ţi spun c-o să ajungi cândva la vorba lor. Poate pentru că, de obicei, chiar ajungi la vorba lor.

Avusesem un an atât de prost, încât mi s-ar fi părut că-l stric dacă lăsam să se întâmple ceva bun.

Olguța este o fetiță de treisprezece ani, așa, ca noi toți.

."The Swiss are uptight and happy. The Thais are laid-back and happy. Icelanders find joy in their binge drinking, Moldovans only misery. Maybe an Indian mind can digest these contradictions, but mine can't.

Să nu-mi spui că nu te-ai prefăcut niciodată că eşti bolnav doar ca să scapi de o lucrare de control sau de o temă nefăcută. Pentru că n-o să te cred. Dacă totuşi eşti excepţia de la regulă, poţi să pui cartea asta jos imediat. Nu-i de tine. Prefer să am cititori inteligenţi.

Live life carefully but save time for fun.

Oamenii își închipuie că, dacă ai un blog, poți scrie pe el toate prostiile care-ți trec prin cap. Nimic mai fals. E limpede că nu poți scrie toate prostiile, ci doar o mică parte.

The Moldovans have amassed a repertoire of expressions to blunt their despair or at least explain it away. One of the more popular is “ca la Moldova”: “This is Moldova.” It’s usually said plaintively, palms open. That and its companion “ce sa fac”—“What can I do?”—are employed when the bus breaks down, again, or the landlord demands an extra forty dollars a month in rent, just because.

Envy, that enemy of happiness, is rife in Moldova. It’s an especially virulent strain, one devoid of the driving ambition that usually accompanies envy. So the Moldovans get all of the downsides of envy without any of its benefits—namely, the thriving businesses and towering buildings erected by ambitious men and women out to prove they are better than everyone else. Moldovans derive more pleasure from their neighbor’s failure than their own success. I can’t imagine anything less happy.

In my native valley of the middle Dniester, gentry spoke Polish, peasants — Ukrainian, officials — Russian with the Odessa accent, merchants — Jewish, carpenters and joiners — being Filippians and Old Believers — Russian with the Novogrod accent, the kabanists spoke in their own dialect. Additionally, in the same area there were also villages of Polish-speaking noblemen, and nobles who spoke Ukrainian, Moldovan villages speaking in Romanian; Gypsies speaking in Gypsy, Turks were no longer there, but in Khotyn, on the other side of the Dniester and in Kamieniec, their minarets were still standing...All these shades of nationality and languages were also in a semi-fluid state. Sons of Poles sometimes became Ukrainians, sons of Germans and French — Poles. In Odessa, unusual things happened: the Greeks became Russians, Poles were seen joining Soyuz Russkavo Naroda. Even stranger combinations arose from mixed marriages. ‘If a Pole marries a Russian woman,’ my father used to say, ‘their children are usually Ukrainians or Lithuanians’.

Everyone here has a different gripe, large or small. The bad fish, for instance, which I’m told is caught in polluted rivers and can be deadly. The biggest complaint, though, is the lack of queuing. “It’s not first-come, first-served, it’s most-obnoxious, first-served,” says Abby. The lack of trust is another popular gripe. “Friends don’t even trust friends. If bad things happen to their friends, people think, ‘Good, maybe it won’t happen to me,’ ” says one volunteer. Corruption is another theme. Paying professors for passing grades is widespread, so much so that Moldovans won’t go to doctors under thirty-five years old. They suspect—with good reason—that they bought their degrees. Thus, the radius of mistrust is widened.

Știu că par o arogantă nesuferită și plină de sine, dar chiar cred că am întotdeauna dreptate. Cum ai putea să trăiești împăcat cu tine dacă n-ai crede asta?! În momentul în care faci sau spui ceva fără să crezi că ai dreptate, ești un mare mincinos. E atât de simplu. Am spus asta și la școală, la ora de dirigenție, într-o intervenție memorabilă (așa îmi închipuiam eu) în care mi-am expus părerea în fața clasei. Consecințele au fost mai degrabă neplăcute și nu s-a lăsat cu aplauze sau felicitări. Raționamentul meu n-a fost bine primit nici de colegii, nici de doamna profesoară, care m-a făcută înfumurat și imposibilă, după care m-a pus să scriu până ora următoare un eseu despre beneficiile modestiei. Modestie? Să fim serioși. E plin la mine în clasă de colegi modești aflați la limita corijenței.

The secret—to being you, to being Happy?” “Just keep on smiling. Even when you’re sad. Keep on smiling.” Not the most profound advice, admittedly. But Happy is wise, for only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. To venture any further, though, is to enter treacherous waters. A slippery seal, happiness is. On the road, I encountered bushels of inconsistencies. The Swiss are uptight and happy. The Thais are laid-back and happy. Icelanders find joy in their binge drinking, Moldovans only misery. Maybe an Indian mind can digest these contradictions, but mine can’t. Exasperated, I call one of the leading happiness researchers, John Helliwell. Perhaps he has some answers. “It’s simple,” he says. “There’s more than one path to happiness.” Of course. How could I have missed it? Tolstoy turned on his head. All miserable countries are alike; happy ones are happy in their own ways. It’s worth considering carbon. We wouldn’t be here without it. Carbon is the basis of all life, happy and otherwise. Carbon is also a chameleon atom. Assemble it one way—in tight, interlocking rows—and you have a diamond. Assemble it another way—a disorganized jumble—and you have a handful of soot. The arranging makes all the difference. Places are the same. It’s not the elements that matter so much as how they’re arranged and in which proportions. Arrange them one way, and you have Switzerland. Arrange them another way, and you have Moldova. Getting the balance right is important. Qatar has too much money and not enough culture. It has no way of absorbing all that cash. And then there is Iceland: a country that has no right to be happy yet is. Iceland gets the balance right. A small country but a cosmopolitan one. Dark and light. Efficient and laid-back. American gumption married to European social responsibility. A perfect, happy arrangement. The glue that holds the entire enterprise together is culture. It makes all the difference. I have some nagging doubts about my journey. I didn’t make it everywhere. Yet my doubts extend beyond matters of itinerary. I wonder if happiness is really the highest good, as Aristotle believed. Maybe Guru-ji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, is right. Maybe love is more important than happiness. Certainly, there are times when happiness seems beside the point. Ask a single, working mother if she is happy, and she’s likely to reply, “You’re not asking the right question.” Yes, we want to be happy but for the right reasons, and,

In the spirit of reciprocity, our church began receiving teams and leaders from the Moldovan church as long ago as 1991. In sharp contrast to the Moldovan pattern-and I say this to my own shame, as I helped shape the relationship-it was many years before a Moldovan pastor preached from our pulpit.

Father Paisii, as a priest of the Moldovan Metropolitan of Orthodox Church, refused to sing the requiem. However, as a priest of the Bessarabian Metropolitan, which in no way at all recognized the authority of the Moldovan Metropolitan, Paisii performed it.

Of course, God’s Moldovan. Otherwise why would he give me so much help?” Jan whispered. Just then, a policeman walked up and fined him three hundred euros for who-knows-what, which the old timer coughed up so as not to lose his entire stash. Jan Realizes that God is not only Moldovan, but also in some sense Romanian, too. The contradiction resolved itself when Jan recalled the close blood ties between the two nations.

În momentul ăsta, adevăratul hipster e cel care NU se îmbracă precum un hipster. De abia pentru asta ai nevoie de tupeu.

Multe idei mi se par bune până în momentul în care cineva încearcă să mă convingă că sunt bune.

Îmi e mult mai ușor să mă apropii de cineva prin prisma antipatiilor comune decât a preferințelor împărtășite. Dacă urăști aceleași lucruri, ăsta e un excelent punct de plecare.

Popescu Tinel avea un Golden Retriever pe care îl antrenase singur și cu care participa la competiții. Știa să aducă înapoi orice obiect îi aruncai – și câinele lui la fel.

To have any goal in your life is to forget about the uselessness of life. To think of interesting ideas. - Isvan Moldovan

Îi îngădui furiei să mă învăluie, fără să mă las copleșită. Iau din ea forța care mă va ajuta să trec și peste momentul acesta. Încet, încep să zâmbesc. E un zâmbet tot mai larg, tot mai sigur. Un zâmbet de învingătoare, care se potrivește perfect cu ce așteaptă lumea de la mine.

This city was so cosmopolitan once," the cook continued, breaking the mackerel's backbone first above its tail, then below its head. "We had Jewish neighbors, lots of them. We also had Greek neighbors, and Armenian neighbors. . . . As a boy I used to buy fish from Greek fishermen. My mother's tailor was Armenian. My father's boss was Jewish. You know, we were all intermingled." "Ask him why things have changed," Armanoush turned to Asya. "Because Istanbul is not a city," the cook remarked, his face lighting up with the importance of the statement he was about to make. "It looks like a city but it is not. It is a city-boat. We live in a vessel!" With that he held the fish by its head and started moving the backbone right and left. For a second Armanoush imagined the mackerel to be made of porcelain, fearing it would shatter to pieces in the cook's hands. But in a few seconds the man had managed to take the whole bone out. Pleased with himself, he continued. "We are all passengers here, we come and go in clusters, Jews go, Russians come, my brother's neighborhood is full of Moldovans.... Tomorrow they will go, others will arrive. That's how it is....

And Italians aren’t as sneaky, rude, mean and lazy as we Moldovans are. They aren’t such knuckledragging knuckleheads. They even dress differently. Their clothes are just like their country. Happy and festive! The people are beautiful. They all sing Italy’s praises, because there’s what to sing about. Not like Moldova, which asks you for love, but is less of a motherland than a step-motherland!