21 Quotes by Patrick Leigh Fermor

I lay in one of those protracted moments of rapture which scatter this journey like asteriks. A little more, I felt, and I would have gone up like a rocket.

The next move was my first independent act and, as it turned out - with a run of luck - the first sensible one.

Dropping toward the watershed, the sun filled the place with evening light and kindled the windows and the western flanks of cupolas and steeples and many belfries, darkening the eastern walls with shadow; and as we gazed, one of them began to strike the hour and another took up the challenge, followed by a third and soon enormous tonnages of sectarian bronze were tolling their ancient rivalries into the dusk.

And the Austrian army, awfully arrayed, boldly, by battery, besieged Belgrade.

It seems at times that strife can no more be separated from monotheism than stripes from a tiger.

The automatic use of Du, even to strangers if they were friends of friends, was very surprising. Sie, it seemed, meant relegation to the outer darkness and people had been known to fight with swords about the matter.

[Poetry] is a field where England can take on all challengers.

I found it impossible to tear myself away from my station and plunge into Hungary. I feel the same disability now; a momentary reluctance to lay hands on this particular fragment of the future; not out of fear, but because, within arm’s reach and still intact, this future seemed, and still seems, so full of promised marvels.

There was a deep wisdom behind the orgiastic and hysterical aspects of ancient religion; there is much to be said in favour of this flinging open of the floodgates to grief. It might be argued that the decorous little services of the West, the hushed voices, the self-control, our brave smiles and calmness either stifle the emotion of sorrow completely, or drive it underground where it lodges and proliferates in a malign and dangerous growth that festers for a lifetime.