“In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!… I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman… He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess… And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all…”Bolesław Prus book The DollThe Doll
“Nature has done well and wisely, in not permitting a man to live forever and in bringing into the world ever new generations. An old person is a used-up machine [… He] has too many dogmas to […] easily […] believe in a new truth […]; too many sympathies and antipathies […] for him to come to love something unfamiliar; […] too many habits to be able to settle on new ways. Let us add suspiciousness — the fruit of bitter experiences; a pessimism inseparable from all manner of disappointments; and finally, a general decline of powers from exhaustion […].”Bolesław Prus "Oda do młodości" ["Ode to Youth"], 1905
“There are neither graves nor death in Nature; there are various forms of existence, some of which enable us to be chemists, others only chemical substances.”Bolesław Prus book The DollThe Doll
“Money really is a great power, only one must know how to use it.”Bolesław Prus book The DollThe Doll