Bolesław Prus was the pen-name of Aleksander Głowacki (August 20, 1847 – May 19, 1912), a Polish journalist and novelist known as the leading representative of realism in 19th-century Polish literature.

Quotes

Bolesław Prus

• Folly is as great as the sea, it will compass anything.
  • Pharaoh (1894–1895)

• For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others.
  • The Doll (1887–1889)

• Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient.
  • The Doll

• A life whose beginning we do not remember, and whose end we do not know.
  • The Doll

• 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...
  • The 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 [...].
  • "Oda do młodości" ["Ode to Youth"], 1905

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