Miklós Bánffy > Quotes

“With human beings the urge to make peace takes some time to germinate, while Homo Sapiens is always ready to hate.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“Sin duda, era un diletante, pero muy refinado, por lo que, desde el punto de vista social, era una persona más agradable que un artista.”
― Miklós Bánffy, Los días contados

“Such apparently illogical actions are almost never inspired by a single motive. They spring from an unknown number of threads, perhaps thousands of them, some forgotten, some unconscious, some conspicuously suppressed or not admitted, which when collected and spun together have formed a conclusion, however considered or unconsidered it may ultimately seem. It is like the myriad tiny wells and springs, underground streams and significant little rivulets of water emerging from far and wide, seeping out from swamps or caverns of rock crystal, surging forth from dark underground or oozing through rotting vegetation until, bursting from a cleft in the rocks, they all unite and merge imperceptibly together then, tumbling down to the valley, they achieved their ultimate purpose and are transformed into a mighty river.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“Llevar anteojos era considerado pretencioso, era señal de ahorro, de trabajo serio, de una concepción moderna del mundo.”
― Miklós Bánffy, Los días contados

“In the great world outside Hungary events were taking place that would change all their lives: the uprising in Russia, the dispute over Crete, the Kaiser Wilhelm’s ill-timed visit to Tangier, the revelation of Germany’s plans to expand its navy – but such matters were of no importance to the members of the Hungarian Parliament. Even events closer to home, such as the rabble-rousing speech of an Austrian politician in Salzburg urging revolt among the German-speaking minorities in northern Hungary, or the anonymous pamphlet, which appeared in Vienna and revealed the total unpreparedness of the Austro-Hungarian forces compared with those of the other European powers, went unnoticed in Budapest. Naturally when Apponyi made a speech in favour of Deszo Baffy’s proposal to limit the demand for Hungarian commands in the army to using Hungarian only in regimental matters, everyone listened and discussed it as if their very lives depended on it.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“Balint pondered the programme outlined by Slawata: centralization, rule by an Imperial Council, the ancient kingdom of Hungary reduced to an Austrian province, and national boundaries to be re-arranged statistically according to the ethnic origin of the inhabitants! Why all this? To what purpose? Slawata had given him the answer: Imperial expansion in the Balkans so that feudal kingdoms for the Habsburgs reached the Sea of Marmora; and it was all to be achieved with the blood of Hungarian soldiers and paid for by Hungarian tax-money! So it was merely to help Vienna spread Austrian hegemony over the nations of the Balkans that Tisza was to be helped to build up the Hungarian national armed forces.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“fame.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“Maftyé sat in silence, the soles of his shoes resting on the dying logs. Through tiny reddened eyelids he gazed blankly at the fire. He seemed completely engrossed in the dancing and fluttering of the flames, in the gold at its centre, and in the little blue flamelets that raced to the ends of logs as if hoping to escape upwards into the smoke, then sinking back into the wood. Sometimes a little blue flame would shoot out sideways from a crack in the bark, as if deliberately blown out by someone inside, shrieking as it went and ending in a loud crackling and a scattering of sparks in every direction; then the log would split open and the gap grow into a pair of smiling lips around a mouth that opened to reveal a fiery hell. Or”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Enchanted Night: Selected Tales

“possible”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“How would anyone believe that any good was to be obtained by adding the Balkan states to the already unwieldy Dual Monarchy and so increasing the Empire to a hundred million souls with differing cultures and traditions? Of course armies could be recruited and young men could die, but great States evolved only through centuries of social tradition and mutual self-interest; they were not imposed by bayonets. To believe the contrary would be as mad as the folly which had put the Archduke Maximilian on the throne of Mexico.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“It seemed now to Balint that both parties in Parliament were fighting instinctively, but without a clear understanding either of their motives or of the inevitable results of their policies and strategy. While Tisza battled to strengthen the army, he could have no inkling that, once strengthened, it would be used to suppress the very independence it was designed to assure – and when the opposition delayed the implementation of Tisza’s policy by petty arguments about shoulder-flashes and army commands, they were unaware that, inadvertently, they were providing ammunition for those very arguments that in the near future would threaten the integrity of the constitution.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“Young Kamuthy now decided to take advantage of the sudden silence to return to his favourite theme. "In Angland," he said with even more self-importance than before, "no one expecths national figureth to be experth in their jobthe. On the contrary, they feel that too much expertithe destroythe all objectivity.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Found Wanting

“...for a man is a Herdentier - an animal that always follows the herd, a gregarious animal - and quickly follow's its neighbour example.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“infamed”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“them with strips of resiny bark so that the fames”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“The public can never know all the facts, ands public opinion is always swayed by passion, never by reason and the best interests of the country.
It may sometimes be necessary to stir up passion, but only if action is to follow...but to go on doing so is a great mistake. If one particular hatred is allowed to become fixed in the public mind it can be like putting shackles on the politicians with the results that measures vital to the country's best interests cannot be passed since government is impossible without public support.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“Propaganda, if too raucous, will always prove counterproductive. The damage arises because in peacetime the nation that never stops menacing others and shouting grievances is at once labelled a disturber of the peace and blamed accordingly. Such behaviour is also stupid because it continually remind others of the quarrel and strengthens their opposition.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“fy”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“A man's character is only formed after the impressions of childhood and early youth have become blended with the indefinable and hidden influences both atavistic and of more immediate heredity. When, like soft clay, the newborn human spirit has been first fashioned by the firm hand of the modeller and then allowed to set and harden, this is the moment of the final character emerges, fixed for life. While the part played by heredity will always remains elusive and uncertain, the influence of a man's early years are not difficult to unfurl if we know where to seek and consider seriously what we find.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“Artificially to incite hatred is not only supererogatory in politics and foreign relations, it is also positively harmful.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“fared”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“Since then many years have passed, and in those years I have often thought how strange are the ways of Fate. Set on one's waylay a single ill-considered spontaneous remark, one is led into a course of action that cannot be stopped whether one wants to or not. At the moment of departure we do not even dream of where our voyage will take us. Even when we have started we deluded ourselves for an unconscionable time that in a short while it will soon be over, and we shall be free again to do as we please. Sometimes, in forests, one meets two such paths that, although divided perhaps by a stream or ditch, seem at first sight to run parallel to one another. One imagines that whichever one chooses will lead us to the same place. However, slowly the paths diverge...and never meet again.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“it might be the turn of a dry sprig or a grey splinter, then a sudden burst of light would project the hard shadows of those sitting beside it into the distance.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Enchanted Night: Selected Tales

“A year and a half had passed since Berchtold had first taken charge of the Viennese Foreign Office, and in this time all his efforts at diplomacy had ended in failure. When the Balkan War had started Berchtold had been so confident of a Turkish victory that he had then declared that, no matter what happened at the front, the status quo in the Balkans would remain unchanged. He had spoken recklessly, and too soon, for almost at once the rebels in the Turkish provinces had chased the Ottoman armies from the field, and so there had been no question, after such dizzying triumphs, of ordering the victorious insurgents to withdraw behind their former frontiers. Berchtold had then found himself in the unenviable position of having to go cap in hand to the London Conference, defend his now untenable former convictions and somehow save what he could from the debacle he had failed to foresee.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Divided

“Such is the psychology of crowds that the majority will follow whoever appeared to be in power...”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“off and”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“fooded”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“Great nations, and even medium-sized ones, can always seek revision of frontiers by normal diplomatic means - if the political climate is favourable. No propaganda or previous jockeying for position is necessary, for if the right moment is chosen and there are good reasons for a change, then there is nothing to stop anyone from putting forward proposals for territorial adjustments...It is always possible to keep alive certain issues with propaganda abroad, but the acquisition of territory needs quiet patient work. No doubt it can be a help if the world gets to know about the existence of such a problem, but it is not until the world is convinced of injustice that redress can follow.”
― Miklós Bánffy, The Phoenix Land: The Memoirs of Count Miklos Banffy

“How simple everything could seem if one looked only at the figures, those cold statistics that took no account of people’s feelings and traditions. How much would be destroyed if men were to be treated as robots! What of the myriad of individual characteristics, passions, aspirations, triumphs and disappointments that together made one people different from another? How could anyone ignore all the different threads of experience that, over the centuries, had formed and deepened the differences that distinguished each nation?”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted

“A Balkán népeivel megnöveszteni a Monarchiát? Fölhizlalni vele százmilliós birodalommá, összehajtani egy karámba a legkülönbözőbb múltú és kultúrájú nemzeteket, és akkor azt hinni, hogy az erőt jelent, nem pedig gyöngeséget?! Ó, hogyne! Sok-sok katonát lehetne sorozni, de a dinasztiákat nem szuronyok tartják fönn, hanem százados hagyomány és társadalmi ezer meg ezer kapcsolat.”
― Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted