The Radetzky March Quotes

“A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“The good man believed that shortsighted people were also deaf and that their spectacles would become clearer if their ears heard more sharply.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“In those days before the Great War when the events narrated in this book took place, it had not yet become a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When one of the living had been extinguished another did not at once take his place in order to obliterate him: there was a gap where he had been, and both close and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they became aware of his gap. When fire had eaten away a house from the row of others in a street, the burnt-out space remained long empty. Masons worked slowly and cautiously. Close neighbors and casual passers-by alike, when they saw the empty space, remembered the aspect and walls of the vanished house. That was how things were then. Everything that grew took its time in growing and everything that was destroyed took a long time to be forgotten. And everything that had once existed left its traces so that in those days people lived on memories, just as now they live by the capacity to forget quickly and completely.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Von der Humanität durch Nationalität zur Bestialität.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“In no time, the platoon were on their feet in front of him, formed up into two ranks, and it struck him suddenly, and probably for the first time in his military career, that these men with their drilled precision were dead parts of dead machines that didn't produce anything.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Our grandfathers didn't leave us much strength, not enough strength to live with, but just about enough to die a meaningless death. Ach!”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Gradually too, Trotta's disappointment was replaced by a sweet melancholy. He made a pact with his sadness. Everything in the world was as sad as it could be, and at the very heart of this wretched world was the Lieutenant. It was for him that the frogs were bruiting so piteously tonight, and the pain-filled crickets were waiting on his behalf. It was for him that the spring night was filled with such a sweet and easy sadness, for him that the stars were positioned so unattainably high in the sky, and it was to him alone that their light blinked so longingly and vainly. The unending pain of the world fitted itself to Trotta's hurt.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Er war so einfach und untadelig wie seine Konduitenliste, und nur der Zorn, der ihn manchmal ergriff, hätte einen Kenner der Menschen ahnen lassen, daß auch in der Seele des Hauptmanns Trotta die nächtlichen Abgründe dämmerten, in denen die Stürme schlafen und die unbekannten Stimmen namenloser Ahnen.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“His heart was pounding. But his soul was easy.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“That is how a farmer walks across the soil in spring--and later, in summer, the traces of his steps are obscured by the billowing richness of the wheat he once sowed.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Morning birdsong filled the room. For all his high opinion of birds, privileged among God's creatures, still, deep in his heart, the Emperor did not trust them, just as he did not trust artists.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Carl Joseph kept silent. It was as if there were no answer to Dr. Demant’s question in the whole big wide world. One could have wasted years searching for an answer, as if human speech were exhausted and dried up for all eternity.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Gradually she got used to seeing men come and go: a race of childish giants, resembling clumsy mammoth insects, fleeting and yet weighty; an army of awkward fools who tried to flutter with leaden wings; warriors who believed that they had conquered when they were despised, that they possessed when they were ridiculed, that they had enjoyed when they had barely tasted; a barbaric horde, for whom she nevertheless waited lifelong.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“And the world was not what it had been. It was at an end. And it was in the disposition of these things that, barely an hour before its end, the valleys and the young and the fools would all be in the right, while the mountains and the old and the wise would all be in the wrong.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Count Chojnicki was curious. No other passion than curiosity sent him out into the world, drew him to the tables of the great gaming halls, sequestered him behind the walls of his old hunting pavilion, sat him down on the parliamentarians' benches, determined that he would return home every spring, compelled him to throw his regular parties, and prevented him from cutting his own throat. It was curiosity that kept him alive.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“She looked like the dangerous proprietress of all the cushions and pillows.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Every year, on the Emperor's birthday, he makes a resolution to begin a new life and not get into debt. And so he gets drunk. And comes home late at night, stands in the kitchen with drawn sword, and commands an entire regiment. The pots are platoons, the teacups are units, the plates are companies. Simon Demant is a colonel, a colonel in the service of Franz Joseph I.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nations-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. The Monarchy, our Monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian peoples. Our Emperor is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the Grace of God and on the faith of the peoples in the Grace of God… The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Lieutenant Trotta wasn't experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“E il mondo non era più il vecchio mondo. Tramontava. Ed era nell'ordine delle cose che un'ora prima del suo tramonto le valli avessero ragione dei monti, i giovani dei vecchi, gli stolti dei savi.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Through the lofty arched windows the Kaiser saw God's sun rising. He crossed himself and genuflected. Since time immemorial he had seen the sun come up every morning. Most of his life he had gotten up first, just as a soldier gets up earlier than his superior. He knew all sunrises, the fiery and cheery ones in summer and the late, dreary, foggy ones in winter. And while he no longer recalled the dates, or the names of the days, the months, the years when disaster or good fortune had overtaken him, he did remember every morning that had ushered in an important day in his life. And he knew that a certain morning had been dismal and another cheerful. And every morning, he had crossed himself and genuflected, the way some trees open their leaves to the sun every morning, whether on a day of storm or a felling ax or deadly frost in spring or else days of peace and warmth and life.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“He simply used water to clear the way for liquor, the way streets are cleaned before an official visit.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“- Je ne comprends pas... comment la monarchie n'existerait-elle plus?
- Si on prends les choses à la lettre, elle dure toujours, naturellement. Nous avons encore une armée - le compte désigna le sous-lieutenant - et des fonctionnaires - le compte désigna le préfet. Mais son corps vivant se désagrège. Elle se désagrège, elle est dèjà désagrégée. C'est un vieillard voué à la mort, dont le moindre rhume de cerveau met la vie en danger, qui mantient l'ancien trône pour la simple et miraculeuse raison qu'il peut encore s'y tenir assis. Pour combien de temps encore, pour combien de temps? Cette époque veut d'abord se créer des états nationaux indépendants. On ne croit plus en Dieu. La nouvelle réligion, c'est le nationalisme. Les peuples ne vont plus à l'église. Ils fréquentent des groupement nationaux. La monarchie, notre monarchie, est fondée sur la pitié; sur la croyance que Dieu a choisi les Habsbourg pour régner sur tant et tant de nations chrétiennes. Notre Empereur est un frère séculier du pape, il est Sa Majesté apostolique, impériale et royale, aucune autre Majesté n'est "apostolique", aucune autre Majesté d'Europe ne dépend, comme lui, de la grâce divine et de la foi des peuples en la grâce divine. L'empereur de l'Allemagne continuera toujours de régner, même si Dieu l'abandonne, il régnera, le cas écheant, par la grâce de la nation. L'empereur d'Autriche, lui, ne peut régner sans Dieu. Mais maintenant, Dieu l'a abandonné!”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Quand on tombait malade, il fallait mourir. La maladie n'était qu'une tentative de la nature pour habituer l'homme à mourir.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Cet empire sombrera fatalement. Dès que notre Empereur fermera les yeux, nous nous disloquerons en cent morceaux. Les Balkans seront plus puissants que nous. Toutes les nations organiseront leurs sales petits États et les Juifs eux-mêmes proclameront un roi en Palestine. Vienne sent déjà la sueur des démocrates, et je ne supporte plus la Ringstrasse. Les ouvriers ont des drapeaux rouges et ne veulent plus travailler. Le bourgemestre de Vienne est un pieux gardien d'immeuble. Les curés suivent déjà le peuple, on joue des saloperies juives et il ne se passe pas une semaine sans qu'un Hongrois, fabricant de W.C., ne devienne baron. Je vous le dis, messieurs, si les fusils ne partent pas dès maintenant, c'en est fait. Nous le verrons encore.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“En quoi le naufrage du monde, dont il pouvait à présent distinguer la venue, plus nettement que, jadis, le prophétique Chojnicki le concernait-il? Son fils était mort. Ses fonctions étaient terminés. Son monde avait sombré.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“- J'aurais bien dit encore, déclara le maire, que M. von Trotta ne pouvait pas survivre à l'Empereur. Ne croyez-vous pas, docteur?
- Je ne sais pas. Je crois qu'ils ne pouvaient, ni l'un ni l'autre, survivre à l'Autriche.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“Carl Joseph turned red. It seemed as if his father, the rain, the clocks, people, time, and nature itself were determined to make his trip even more difficult. On those afternoons when he had managed to visit the living Frau Slama, he had also listened for the golden stroke of the bells, as impatient as today, but intent on not finding the sergeant in. Those afternoons seemed buried behind many decades. Death overshadowed and concealed them, Death”
― Joseph Roth, Radetzky March