Quotes from book
Without Dogma

Without Dogma
Henryk Sienkiewicz Original title Bez dogmatu (Polish, 1891)

Without dogma is a novel of manners by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Polish Nobel Prize in Literature winner, published in 1891. Its narrative concentrates around the experiences of Leon Płoszowski, a man from a wealthy aristocratic family, who struggles to find the meaning of life in world without morality by trying to self-analyze his feelings towards the encountered women. The novel has been associated to decadent movement, attacked for no clear condemnation of immoral acts and received as an attempt to picture the fin de siècle generation. Written in first person, the novel is the only one of Sienkiewicz's works that follows diary format.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“The modern man is conscious of everything, and cannot find a remedy against anything.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

10 November
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: Formerly character proved a strong curb for passions; in the present there is not much strength in character, and it grows less and less because of the prevailing scepticism, which is a decomposing element. It is like a bacillus breeding in the human soul; it destroys the resistant power against the physiological craving of the nerves, of nerves diseased. The modern man is conscious of everything, and cannot find a remedy against anything.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“I love her now beyond all words; she sees it, — she reads it in my eyes, and in my whole manner towards her.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

11 November
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: I love her now beyond all words; she sees it, — she reads it in my eyes, and in my whole manner towards her. When I succeed in cheering her up, or call forth her smiles, I am beside myself with delight. There is at present in my love something of the attachment of the faithful servant who loves his mistress. I often feel as if I ought to humble myself before her, as if my proper place were at her feet. She never can grow ugly, changed, or old to me. I accept everything, agree to everything, and worship her as she is.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“It is not merely a question of sorrow after the death of a beloved being, but of the reproaches she will apply to herself, thinking that if she had loved him more he might have clung more to his life.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

13 November
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: It is not merely a question of sorrow after the death of a beloved being, but of the reproaches she will apply to herself, thinking that if she had loved him more he might have clung more to his life. Empty, trivial, and unjust reproaches, for she did everything that force of will could command, — she spurned my love and remained pure and faithful to him. But one must know that soul full of scruples as I know it, to gauge the depth of misery into which the news would plunge her, and how she would suspect herself, — asking whether his death did not correspond to some deeply hidden desire on her part for freedom and happiness; whether it did not gratify those wishes she had scarcely dared to form.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“If it be a great misfortune to love another man's wife, be she ever so commonplace, it is an infinitely greater misfortune to love a virtuous woman.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

4 August
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: If it be a great misfortune to love another man's wife, be she ever so commonplace, it is an infinitely greater misfortune to love a virtuous woman. There is something in my relations to Aniela of which I never heard or read; there is no getting out of it, no end. A solution, whether it be a calamity or the fulfilment of desire, is something, but this is only an enchanted circle. If she remain immovable and I do not cease loving her, it will be an everlasting torment, and nothing else. And I have the despairing conviction that neither of us will give way.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“It is an altogether wrong idea that the modern product of civilization is less susceptible to love.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

10 November
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: It is an altogether wrong idea that the modern product of civilization is less susceptible to love. I sometimes think it is the other way.