Bolesław Prus

Bolesław Prus was the pen-name of Aleksander Głowacki (August 20, 1847 – May 19, 1912), a Polish journalist and novelist known as the leading representative of realism in 19th-century Polish literature. thumb|150px|Bolesław Prus (Aleksander Głowacki), circa 1895 Quotes Folly is as great as the sea, it will compass anything. Pharaoh (1894–1895) A life whose beginning we do not remember, and whose end we do not know. The Doll (1887–1889) And is there no war on today? It is the weapons that have changed, that's all. Instead of an axe or scythe or scimitar, they fight with roubles. The Doll For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others. The Doll In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all... The Doll Money really is a great power, only one must know how to use it. The Doll Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient. The Doll There are neither graves nor death in Nature; there are various forms of existence, some of which enable us to be chemists, others only chemical substances. The Doll ‘There are two men in me,’ he thought, ‘one quite sensible, the other a lunatic. But I am not concerned with that any longer... What shall I do, though, if the sensible man wins?’ The Doll Your true Pole starts to sweat at the second decimal place, at the fifth he runs a temperature, and at the seventh has a stroke... The Doll Nature has done well and wisely, in not permitting a man to live forever and in bringing into the world ever new generations. An old person is a used-up machine [... He] has too many dogmas to [...] easily [...] believe in a new truth [...]; too many sympathies and antipathies [...] for him to come to love something unfamiliar; [...] too many habits to be able to settle on new ways. Let us add suspiciousness — the fruit of bitter experiences; a pessimism inseparable from all manner of disappointments; and finally, a general decline of powers from exhaustion [...]. "Oda do młodości" ["Ode to Youth"], 1905 External links Category:Philosophers from Poland Category:Novelists from Poland Category:Essayists from Poland Category:Short story writers from Poland Category:Journalists from Poland Category:Literary critics Category:1847 births Category:1912 deaths