England is never in a hurry because she is eternal.

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...

But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them.

Am auzit sau am citit că filoanele de aur au uneori la suprafață un înveliș de cuarț, din care e greu să extragi metalul. Presupun că și inima ta are un asemenea înveliș; înăuntru se...

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

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...

Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work.

She wasted and grew so thin that she no longer was a little girl, but the shadow of a little girl. The flame of her life flickered so faintly that it appeared sufficient to blow...

Așa-i de c nd lumea, că cine se introspectează prea mult, acela nu mai e de acord nici cu sine însuși, în cele din urmă, iar cine nu-i de acord cu sine însuși, acela nu-i...

If the infinity of the sea may call out thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more he...

He would not now conduct little Nell to the coast; he would not convey her by a steamer to Port Said, would not surrender her to Mr. Rawlinson; he himself would not fall into his...

He always smiles, even when contemplating nothing good.

It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph.

They did not, however, infect the air as the Sudanese sun dried them up like mummies; all had the hue of gray parchment, and were so much alike that the bodies of the Europeans, Egyptians,...

At most, a hundred paces separated him from them. The powerful beast, seeing the riders and horses, rose on his fore paws and began to gaze at them. The sun, which now stood low, illuminated...

On an exhausted field, only weeds grow.

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

The shots had dispersed the birds; there remained only two marabous, standing between ten and twenty paces away and plunged in reverie. They were like two old men with bald heads pressed between the shoulders.

The profession of the writer has its thorns about which the reader does not dream.

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...

…he began to fear whether in the presence of far greater events, all his acts would not fade into insignificance, just as a drop of rain disappears into the sea.

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

Tell me,’ asked Stas, ‘what is a wicked deed?’ ‘If anyone takes away Kali’s cow,’ he answered after a brief reflection, ‘that then is a wicked deed.’ ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Stas, ‘and what is a good...

They were like two poor little leaves in a storm which bore death and annihilation not only to the heads of individuals, but to whole towns and entire tribes. What hand could snatch it and...

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.

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.

Numai moartea e o forță la fel de absolută, dar în lupta de veacuri dintre aceste două puteri, dragostea este cea care ia moartea de g t, îi pune genunchiul în piept, o bate ziua...

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...