Stanislaw Jerzy Lec quotes:
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Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
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The weakest link in a chain is the strongest because it can break it.
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You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
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Value your words. Each one may be the last.
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Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
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Telling lies does not work in advertising.
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Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
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You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories
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When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
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Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.
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Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood.
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People find life entirely too time-consuming.
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When smashing monuments, save the pedestals-they always come in handy.
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You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
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If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?
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A tired exclamation mark is a question mark.
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He who limps is still walking.
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Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics.
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Whenever man begins to doubt himself, he does something so stupid that he is reassured.
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Those who put blinders on their eyes should remember that the set also includes bridle and a whip.
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Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody.
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Does a little fish, swimming though the net's eye, suffer from inferiority complex?
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The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.
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Never lie when the truth is more profitable.
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I prefer the sign NO ENTRANCE to the sign which says NO EXIT.
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There are parodies of non-existent things.
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Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters.
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The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
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No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
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The first requisite for immortality is death.
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Politics: a Trojan horse race.
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Never saw off the branch you are on, unless you are being hanged from it.
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Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.
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A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text. Does this make it pornography?
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No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
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The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.
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Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.
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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.
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Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind.
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"Oh to be old again," said a young corpse.
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A fat person lives shorter but eats longer.
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A man who is a genius and doesn't know it, probably isn't.
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A sweet thing, perspective - a chance to see your enemies so small.
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Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
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All Gods were immortal.
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All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.
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Among giants, try and be a dwarf; among dwarfs, try and be a giant; but among equals, try and be an equal
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An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.
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An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret.
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An error becomes an error when born as truth.
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Artistic honesty sometimes prevents an artist from being born.
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At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche.
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Be yourself. A horse without the lancer is still a horse; a lancer without the horse is just a man.
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Believers believe in resurrection, atheists only in comebacks.
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Beyond each corner, new directions lie in wait.
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Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.
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Create your own myths; that is how the gods got started.
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Do I believe? God only knows.
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Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul?
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Do not make gods in your own images.
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Do not turn your back on anyone. You may be painted on one side only.
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Even Einstein had to rely for his time on his clock.
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Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination.
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Every now and then you meet a man whose ignorance is encyclopedic.
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Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.
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Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.
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He who wants to get to the source must swim against the current.
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Here lies William Trollope, Who made these stones roll up; When death took his soul up, His body filled this hole up
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How many prison years in the years since Christ!
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I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.
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I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure.
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I has a dream about reality. It was such a relief to wake up.
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If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.
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If you do not know his language, you will never understand a foreigner's silence.
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Illiterates have to dictate.
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Impartiality is not neutrality. It is partiality for justice.
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In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
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In order for you to be yourself, you have to be somebody first.
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Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.
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It isn't easy to live after death. It takes a lifetime.
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It's the priests who have demands, not the gods.
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Legends are often destroyed by those in need of its stuff.
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Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone. A trap. Because then he will be no longer without guilt.
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Love of one's country recognizes no frontiers... of other countries.
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Man is fatally slow on the uptake; it always takes him until the next generation to understand what's going on.
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Many a zero thinks it is the ellipse on which the Earth travels.
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Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.
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Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand.
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Most of the sighs we hear have been edited.
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Myth is nothing more than ancient gossip.
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Never saw the branch you are sittin on, unless they are trying to hang you from it.
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Never turn your back on reality. It surrounds you.
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Oh, to know God's private address.
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On the top of each peak you are on the edge of the abyss
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One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't enough policemen to control them
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Pants get shiny even on a throne.
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Perfect imitations must share the fate of the originals.
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Pity that the only way to paradise is in a hearse.
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Powerless rage can work miracles.
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Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a nation.
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Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.
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Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?
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Some people drop their wings in order to grow a hump
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Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.
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Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.
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Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?
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The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens.
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The consumer's side of the coffin lid is never ostentatious.
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The exit is usually where the entrance was.
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The first condition of immortality is death.
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The man who bows before the ruler, shows his behind to the courtiers
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The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
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The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.
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The spirit of the times can haunt even the atheists.
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There is a dispute about the existence of God. Both sides try to hide that they killed Him - even before He came into being.
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There were grammatical errors even in his silence.
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To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans - what?
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To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply?
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We are all equal before the law, but not before those appointed to applyit.
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We looked into each other's eyes. I saw myself, she saw herself.