For Two Thousand Years Quotes

“I've always believed that the only defeats and victories that matter in life are those you lose or win alone, against yourself.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“You will face yourself again in a moment of terror and will learn once again that old lesson you keep forgetting: that you can escape from anywhere, but you cannot flee your own self.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“Doesn't being over-familiar put you at a disadvantage? A more formal way of speaking doesn't just mean you're being polite, it's also a way of protecting yourself.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“I was happy three days ago. Today I'm depressed. What happened? Nothing. An inner crutch slipped. Some poorly suppressed memory rose to the surface.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“I embraced her and she did not object at all. She let herself be kissed and kissed back, but coolly, without conviction, absently, as if she were smoking a cigarette.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“What an odd thing a stranger is. A stranger sleeping next to you. I listen to his breathing as if it were his entire life, with its hidden processes, the pulsing of the blood in the tissues, with thousands of tiny hidden decays and combustions, which together create and maintain him.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“The abundance of beards in periods of social unrest, times of revolt or upheaval, should be noted. It's the handiest way people have of making themselves mysterious.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn't balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn't be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great 'droughts' and 'rains'. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm.
I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass -- because it has come and passed before.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“A book either knocks you down or raises you up.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“A stranger sleeps next to me, like a stone beside another stone.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“For too long I have played on the stage of lucidity, and I have lost. Now I need to accustom my eyes to the falling darkness. I need to contemplate the natural slumber of all things, which the light calls forth, yet also causes to tire. Life must begin in darkness. Its powers of germination lie hidden. Every day has its night, every light has its shadow.
I cannot be asked to accept these shadows gladly. It is enough that I accept them.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“I have always believed it my right to have a locked door between me and the world, and to hold the key myself. Now look at it, kicked open. The doors are off their hinges, the portals unguarded, every cover blown.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“There is doubtless such a thing as a ’national character’. In art, it is the lowest common denominator. The more specific the character, the more commonplace it is. That is why creation always requires overcoming such a character.

An artist, if he is anything, is an individual. But to be an individual means embodying your own truths, suffering your own experiences, and inventing your own style. But these things can only occur by renouncing facility, and the most unfortunate facility comes from these so-called national characters, formed by the sedimentation of collective mediocrity, which lies there ready-made. National character is by definition that which remains in a culture after you have removed the personal effort involved in thinking, the personal experience of life and the triumph of individual creation.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“have the feeling that the Zionist movement is an expression of despair: a revolt against destiny. A tragic effort to move towards simplicity, land, peace. Intellectuals who want to escape their solitude.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“I received two punches during today’s lectures and I took eight pages of notes. Good value, for two punches.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“You see, the notion of "sin" is for me an abstraction. There's no such thing as "sin". There's only such a thing as "tactlessness".”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years

“Sometimes symbolism is too obvious.”
― Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years