The Story of San Michele Quotes

“To become a good dog-doctor it is necessary to love dogs, but it is also necessary to understand them - the same as with us, with the difference that it is easier to understand a dog than a man and easier to love him.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“We know that we are going to die, in fact it is the only thing we know of what is in store for us. All the rest is mere guesswork, and most of the time we guess wrong. Like children in the trackless forest we grope our way through our lives in blissful ignorance of what is going to happen to us from one day to another, what hardships we may have to face, what more or less thrilling adventures we may encounter before the great adventure, the most thrilling of all, the Adventure of Death.”
― Axel Munthe, THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE

“Happiness we can only find in ourselves, it is a waste of time to seek for it from others, few have any to spare. Sorrow we have to bear alone as best we can, it is not fair to try to shift it on others, be they men or women. We have to fight our own battles and strike as hard as we can, born fighters as we are.”
― Axel Munthe, THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE

“Dievai visas gėrybes parduoda tikrąja kaina, yra pasakęs vienas senovės poetas. Jis būtų galėjęs pridurti, kad pačias verčiausias jie parduoda pigiausiai. Viskas, kas mums tikrai naudinga - nebrangu; tik už tai, be ko galima apsieiti, mokam didelius pinigus. Kas gražu - išvis neparduodama; visa tai nemirtingieji dievai mums duoda veltui.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Death, the giver of Life, the slayer of Life, the beginning and the end.”
― Axel Munthe, THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE

“Mes žinom, kad mirsim - tiesą sakant, vien tą ir težinom apie savo ateitį. Visa kita yra tik spėliojimai, kurie dažniausiai nepasitvirtina. Kaip vaikai neįžengiamoj girioj kiūtinam apgraibom per gyvenimą, laimingi, kad nežinom, kas mums nutiks rytoj, su kokiais susidursime negandais, kokie šiurpūs išmėginimai mūsų laukia prieš patį šiurpiausią išmėginimą - Mirtį. Kartkarčiais apstulbę ryžtamės baikščiai prašnekinti savo likimą, bet atsakymo į klausimą negauname, nes žvaigždės per toli. Juo greičiau suprasime, kad mūsų likimas pareina nuo mūsų pačių, o ne nuo žvaigždžių, juo mums bus geriau. Laimę galime rasti tik patys savyje, nesitikėkite jos sulaukti iš kitų - laimės taip mažai, jog retas gali ja dalytis. Skausmą turime pakelti vieni - nesąžininga užkrauti jį kitam, vis tiek, ar tai būtų vyras, ar moteris. Kiekvienas iš mūsų turi pats savo jėgomis kvėpuoti ir kirsti iš paskutiniųjų, kaip pridera kovotojams, nes mes tokie ir esame gimę. Visi mes vieną dieną sulauksime taikos, - taikos, kuri bus garbinga net nugalėtajam, jeigu jis ištvėrė iki galo.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Women, though they do not seem to know it themselves, like far better to obey than to be obeyed. They pretend to be our equals, but they know jolly well themselves that they are not – luckily for them, for if they were our equals we should like them far less. I think on the whole much better of women than of men, but I do not tell it to them. They have far more courage, they face disease and death much better than we do, they have more pity and less vanity. Their instinct is on the whole a safer guide through their life than our intelligence, they do not make fools of themselves as often as we do.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Why didn’t we build more hospitals and fewer churches, you could pray to God everywhere but you could not operate in a gutter!”
― Axel Munthe, THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE

“Kas nori prarasti pinigus - tepasilaiko juos sau, kas nori išsaugoti juos amžiams - teatiduoda kitam. be to, jūs neturite teisės pasilikti sau tų pinigų - juk jie nepriklauso jums, pinigai išvis nepriklauso žmonėms. Visi pinigai velnio nuosavybė, ir jis dieną naktį sėdi savo kontoroj ant aukso maišų ir perka už juos žmonių sielas. Pasistenkit greičiau atsikratyti nešvaraus pinigo, kurį jis bruka jums į delną, nelaikykite jo, nes šis prakeiktas metalas nudegins jums pirštus, įsisiurbs į kraują, apakins, užnuodys mintis ir sukietins širdį. Paaukokite jį "vargdienių seselėms", meskit tuos nelemtus pinigus į griovį - ten jų tikroji vieta! Kuriam galui krauti pinigus, jei vis tiek reikės jų netekti? Mirtis turi antrą raktą nuo jūsų pinigų skrynios.
Dievai visas gėrybes parduoda tikrąja kaina, yra pasakęs vienas senovės poetas. Jis būtų galėjęs pridurti, kad pačias verčiausias jie parduoda pigiausiai. Viskas, kas mums tikrai naudinga - nebrangu; tik už tai, be ko galima apsieiti, mokam didelius pinigus. Kas tikrai gražu - išvis neparduodama; visa tai nemirtingieji dievai mums duoda veltui. Nemokamai galima gėrėtis saulėtekiai ir saulėlydžiais, danguje plaukiančiais debesėliais, giriomis ir laukais, nuostabai jūra. Dykai mums čiulba paukščiai, veltui galim prisiskinti pakelėj lauko gėlių ir įeiti į žvaigždėtą Nakties menę. Vargšas miega geriau nei turtuolis. Paprastas maistas ilgainiui pasidaro skanesnis negu įmantrūs patiekalai Rico restorane. Pasitenkinimas ir sielos ramybė geriau mėgsta kaimo pirkelę negu ištaigingus meisto rūmus. Keletas bičiulių, nedaug, labai nedaug knygų ir šuo - štai ir viskas, ko reikia žmogui, kol jis turi pats save.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Norstrom always used to say that I had two
different brains working alternatively in my head:
the well developed brain of a fool and the un-
developed brain of a sort of genius.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“It was evident that colitis suited her far better than appendicitis, her face had lost its languid pallour and her big eyes sparkled with youth.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Professor Weir-Mitchell, the leading nerve specialist of America, with whom I had already had some dealings in my Paris days continued to send me his surplus of dilapidated millionaires and their unstrung wives. Their exuberant daughters who had invested their vanity in the first available Roman prince, also began to send for me in their sombre old palaces to consult me about their various symptoms of disillusion. The rest of the vast crowd of Americans followed like a flock of sheep.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“They are no criminals, but mere victims of a momentary absent-mindedness of Mother Nature, perhaps at their birth, perhaps at their conception. What is the explanation of the enormous increase of sexual inversion? Does nature revenge herself on the masculinized girl of to-day by rearing an effeminate son from her straightened hips and flattened breasts? Or are we the bewildered spectators of a new phase of evolution with a gradual amalgamation of two distinct animals into a new, hitherto unknown specimen, last survival of a doomed race on a worn-out planet, missing link between the Homo sapiens of today and the mysterious Super-Homo of tomorrow?”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“If the statement of the Salpêtrière school that only hysterical subjects are hypnotizable was correct it would mean that at least eighty-five per cent of mankind was suffering from hysteria.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“I said there was no reason why a quack might not be a good doctor, a diploma meant little to his patients as long as he was able to help them.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Even to-day no woman when her life or the life of her child is in danger will stick to a doctor of her own sex.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“The law of differentiation between the sexes is an mimutable law of Nature which runs through the whole creation to become more and more accentuated the higher the types are developed.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Love itself is short-lived like the flower. With man it dies its natural death in marriage, with woman it often survives to the last transformed in a purely maternal tenderness for the fallen hero of her dreams. Women cannot understand that man is by nature polygamous.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“I am convinced that you know more than I do about the human body in health and disease; it is just possible that although you are twice my age, I know more than you do about the human mind.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“My father always told us that marriage was a very risky undertaking, and that it was a wise saying that one could not be too careful in the choice of one’s mother-in-law.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“I know that life is beautiful, but I also know that we often make a mess of it and turn it into a silly farce or a heart-rending tragedy, or both, so much so that one ends by not knowing whether to cry or to laugh. It is easier to cry, but far better to laugh, so long as one doesn’t laugh aloud.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“The cruel wild beast is not behind the bars of the cage, he stands in front of it.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Thirdly, unless his heart is very sound he will soon show unmistakable signs of precocious hardening of that organ; he will become indifferent and insensible to the suffering of others, like the pleasure-seeking people around him. You cannot be a good doctor without pity.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“If you come across a fashionable doctor, watch him carefully at a safe distance before handing yourself over to him. He may be a good doctor, but in very many cases he is not. First, because as a rule he is far too busy to listen with patience to your long story. Secondly, because he is inevitably liable to become a snob, if he is not one already,”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“I myself am beginning to have quite enough of colitis, and now since the Marquise is going to the country, I am replacing it with a lap-dog, more suitable to country-life.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts and to the singing of a bird outside his window and to the far-away voice of the sea.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Poets and philosophers, who in sonorous verse and prose hail Death as the Deliverer, often grow pale at the very mention of the name of their best friend.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“One reviewer has discovered that “there is enough material in the Story of San Michele to furnish writers of short sensational stories with plots for the rest of their lives.” They are quite Welcome to this material for what it is worth.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Besides I did not want any money, I should not know what to do with it, I was afraid of money, I hated it. I wanted to lead a simple life amongst simple, unsophisticated people. If they could neither read nor write, so much the better. All I needed was a whitewashed room with a hard bed, a deal table, a couple of chairs and a piano. The twitter of birds outside my open window and the sound of the sea from afar. All the things I really cared for could be got for very little money, I should be quite happy in the humblest surroundings as long as I had nothing ugly around me.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele

“Norstrom always used to say that I had two different brains working alternatively in my head, the well developed brain of a fool and the undeveloped brain of a sort of genius.”
― Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele