Stanislaw Jerzy Lec quotes:

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

The weakest link in a chain is the strongest because it can break it.

You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.

Telling lies does not work in advertising.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood.

People find life entirely too time-consuming.

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals-they always come in handy.

You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?

A tired exclamation mark is a question mark.

He who limps is still walking.

Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics.

Whenever man begins to doubt himself, he does something so stupid that he is reassured.

Those who put blinders on their eyes should remember that the set also includes bridle and a whip.

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody.

Does a little fish, swimming though the net's eye, suffer from inferiority complex?

The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.

Never lie when the truth is more profitable.

I prefer the sign NO ENTRANCE to the sign which says NO EXIT.

There are parodies of non-existent things.

Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

The first requisite for immortality is death.

Politics: a Trojan horse race.

Never saw off the branch you are on, unless you are being hanged from it.

Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text. Does this make it pornography?

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind.

"Oh to be old again," said a young corpse.

A fat person lives shorter but eats longer.

A man who is a genius and doesn't know it, probably isn't.

A sweet thing, perspective - a chance to see your enemies so small.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

All Gods were immortal.

All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.

Among giants, try and be a dwarf; among dwarfs, try and be a giant; but among equals, try and be an equal

An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.

An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret.

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

Artistic honesty sometimes prevents an artist from being born.

At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche.

Be yourself. A horse without the lancer is still a horse; a lancer without the horse is just a man.

Believers believe in resurrection, atheists only in comebacks.

Beyond each corner, new directions lie in wait.

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.

Create your own myths; that is how the gods got started.

Do I believe? God only knows.

Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul?

Do not make gods in your own images.

Do not turn your back on anyone. You may be painted on one side only.

Even Einstein had to rely for his time on his clock.

Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination.

Every now and then you meet a man whose ignorance is encyclopedic.

Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

He who wants to get to the source must swim against the current.

Here lies William Trollope, Who made these stones roll up; When death took his soul up, His body filled this hole up

How many prison years in the years since Christ!

I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.

I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure.

I has a dream about reality. It was such a relief to wake up.

If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.

If you do not know his language, you will never understand a foreigner's silence.

Illiterates have to dictate.

Impartiality is not neutrality. It is partiality for justice.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

In order for you to be yourself, you have to be somebody first.

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.

It isn't easy to live after death. It takes a lifetime.

It's the priests who have demands, not the gods.

Legends are often destroyed by those in need of its stuff.

Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone. A trap. Because then he will be no longer without guilt.

Love of one's country recognizes no frontiers... of other countries.

Man is fatally slow on the uptake; it always takes him until the next generation to understand what's going on.

Many a zero thinks it is the ellipse on which the Earth travels.

Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.

Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand.

Most of the sighs we hear have been edited.

Myth is nothing more than ancient gossip.

Never saw the branch you are sittin on, unless they are trying to hang you from it.

Never turn your back on reality. It surrounds you.

Oh, to know God's private address.

On the top of each peak you are on the edge of the abyss

One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't enough policemen to control them

Pants get shiny even on a throne.

Perfect imitations must share the fate of the originals.

Pity that the only way to paradise is in a hearse.

Powerless rage can work miracles.

Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a nation.

Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?

Some people drop their wings in order to grow a hump

Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?

The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens.

The consumer's side of the coffin lid is never ostentatious.

The exit is usually where the entrance was.

The first condition of immortality is death.

The man who bows before the ruler, shows his behind to the courtiers

The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.

The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.

The spirit of the times can haunt even the atheists.

There is a dispute about the existence of God. Both sides try to hide that they killed Him - even before He came into being.

There were grammatical errors even in his silence.

To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans - what?

To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply?

We are all equal before the law, but not before those appointed to applyit.

We looked into each other's eyes. I saw myself, she saw herself.