20 Quotes by Antal Szerb

If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that.

And while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen...

In London November isn’t a month, it’s a state of mind.

The sense of impending disaster hung over the garden like a chandelier.

We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

We were so intimate that it wasn’t possible to flirt or fall in love with one another. For love, there has to be a distance across which the lovers can approach one another. The approach is of course an illusion, because love in fact separate people. Love is a polarity. Two lovers are the two oppositely charged poles of the universe.

Love preserves one moment for ever, the moment of its birth. The beloved never ages.

The nature of civilisation everywhere was such that, even with the Greeks, it diverted people’s minds away from the reality of death.

The matter could in fact have been resolved quite simply if all those round the table had been equally intelligent. But in this life that is rarely given.