Quotations

A few more quotations from 'An Englishman in love with Bucharest's blowsy charms'.

From A Political Refugee From the Global Village

Not in nationalism does one find the main key to the epoch of the early Soviet years, but in the destructive whirlwind of internationalism, estranged from any feeling of nationality or traditions. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like a pain of an amputated leg no longer there. Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a battlefield. Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana


“You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.” Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana


If thou love thine equal, it is no conquest; if thy superior, thou shalt be envied; if thine inferior, laughed at. If one that is beautiful, her colour will change before thou get thy desire; if one that is wise, she will overreach thee so far that thou shalt never touch her; if virtuous, she will eschew such fond affection; if deformed, she is not worthy of any affection; if she be rich, she needeth thee not; if poor, thou needest not her. If old, why shouldst thou love her; if young, why should she love thee? John Lyly, Euphues and His England