Henryk Sienkiewicz

“It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad. But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, -- happiness and love.”

“On an exhausted field, only weeds grow.”

“He always smiles, even when contemplating nothing good.”

“In the presence of the storm, thunderbolts, hurricane, rain, darkness, and the lions, which might be concealed but a few paces away, he felt disarmed and helpless.”

“להיות חסר ידיד הוא סימן היכר של לב יבש יותר מאשר של נפש עילאית.”

“הנפש האנושית כמוה כדבורה שיש בכוחה להפיק דבש אפילו מן המרירים שבפרחים.”

“בכל מקום שאליו אדם מביא את יצירתו, הוא משאיר חלק של לבו.”

“לכל אדם יש זכות לדרוש את המגיע לו.”

“מי יתן והיהודים יתפסו אותך בצוואר.”

“השקר כמוהו כשמן הצף על פניה של האמת.”

“טוהר המידות כמוהו כמוזיקה, וחייו של החכם כמוהם כהרמוניה.”

“There, about a dozen times during the day, the wind drives over the sky the swollen clouds, which water the earth copiously, after which the sun shines brightly, as if freshly bathed, and floods with a golden luster the rocks, the river, the trees, and the entire jungle.”

“This homage has been rendered not to me - for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me - but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius.”

“The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness.”

“Prophet,' he said, 'Your doctrines I do not know; therefore if I accepted them, I would do it out of fear like a coward and a base man. Are you anxious that your faith be professed by cowards and base people?”

“Day is like day as two beads in a rosary, unless changes of weather form the only variety.”

“Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh.”

“Amid the stillness of the night, in the depths of the ravine, from the direction in which the corpses lay suddenly resounded a kind of inhuman, frightful laughter in which quivered despair, and joy, and cruelty, and suffering, and pain, and sobbing, and derision; the heart-rending and spasmodic laughter of the insane or condemned.”

“If we repay evil with good, then how do we repay the good?”

“In the meantime the groans changed into the protracted, thunderous roar by which all living creatures are struck with terror, and the nerves of people, who do not know what fear is, shake, just as the window-panes rattle from distant cannonading.”