The Good Soldier Švejk Quotes

“When Švejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: 'I really don't know why those loonies get so angry when they're kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it's the most common or garden thing to do. There's a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Jesus Christ was innocent too,' said Svejk, 'and all the same they crucified him. No one anywhere has ever worried about a man being innocent. Maul halten und weiter dienen ['Grin and bear it and get on with the job'] - as they used to tell us in the army. That's the best and finest thing of all.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“After debauches and orgies there always follows the moral hangover.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“And somewhere from the dim ages of history the truth dawned upon Europe that the morrow would obliterate the plans of today.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Preparations for the slaughter of mankind have always been made in the name of God or some supposed higher being which men have devised and created in their own imagination.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“The famous field altar came from the Jewish firm of Moritz Mahler in Vienna, which manufactured all kinds of accessories for mass as well as religious objects like rosaries and images of saints.

The altar was made up of three parts, lberally provided with sham gilt like the whole glory of the Holy Church.

It was not possible without considerable ingenuity to detect what the pictures painted on these three parts actually represented. What was certain was that it was an altar which could have been used equally well by heathens in Zambesi or by the Shamans of the Buriats and Mongols.

Painted in screaming colors it appeared from a distance like a coloured chart intended for colour-blind railway workers. One figure stood out prominently - a naked man with a halo and a body which was turning green, like the parson's nose of a goose which has begun to rot and is already stinking. No one was doing anything to this saint. On the contrary, he had on both sides of him two winged creatures which were supposed to represent angels. But anyone looking at them had the impression that this holy naked man was shrieking with horror at the company around him, for the angels looked like fairy-tale monsters and were a cross between a winged wild cat and the beast of the apocalypse.

Opposite this was a picture which was meant to represent the Holy Trinity. By and large the painter had been unable to ruin the dove. He had painted a kind of bird which could equally well have been a pigeon or a White Wyandotte. God the Father looked like a bandit from the Wild West served up to the public in an American film thriller.

The Son of God on the other hand was a gay young man with a handsome stomach draped in something like bathing drawers. Altogether he looked a sporting type. The cross which he had in his hand he held as elegantly as if it had been a tennis racquet.

Seen from afar however all these details ran into each other and gave the impression of a train going into a station.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Those who boggle at strong language are cowards, because it is real life which is shocking them, and weaklings like that are the very people who cause most harm to culture and character. They would like to see the nation grow up into a group of over-sensitive little people--masturbators of false culture...”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Sometimes I notice I'm demented, especially at sunset.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“I suffered the misfortune that I sat down at a table and started drinking one glass of beer after another.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“The lieutenant’s fooling around again with the telegraph girl at the station,” said the corporal, after he had gone. “He’s been running after her for a fortnight and he’s always frightfully furious when he comes from the telegraph office and he says about her: “She’s a whore. She won’t sleep with me!”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“All along the line,' said the volunteer, pulling the blanket over him, 'everything in the army stinks of rottenness. Up till now the wide-eyed masses haven't woken up to it. With goggling eyes they let themselves be made into mincemeat and then when they're struck by a bullet they just whisper, "Mummy!" Heroes don't exist, only cattle for the slaughter and the butchers in the general staffs. But in the end every body will mutiny and there will be a fine shambles. Long live the army! Goodnight!”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Austria's victory crawled out of her latrines.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“War demanded valour even in pilfering.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Vopravdu nevím, proč se ti blázni zlobějí, když je tam drží. Člověk tam může lézt nahej po podlaze, vejt jako šakal, zuřit a kousat. Jestli by to udělal člověk někde na promenádě, tak by se lidi divili, ale tam to patří k něčemu prachobyčejnýmu. Je tam taková svoboda, vo kerej se ani socialistům nikdy nezdálo.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“This is what opportunity brings with it. It's the self-determination of man. Every man in the course of his life eternal life undergoes countless changes and has to appear once in this worlds as a thief in certain periods of his activity.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“When criminals are hanged, priests always officiate, annoying the malefactors by their presence. In Prussia a pastor conducts the poor wretch to the block ; in Austria a Catholic priest escorts him to the gallows ; in France to the guillotine ; in America a clergyman accompanies him to the electric chair ; in Spain to the ingenious appliance by which he is strangled, etc. Everywhere they have to carry a crucifix about on these occasions, as if to say: "You're only having your head chopped off, you're only being hanged, you're only being strangled, you're only having 15,000 volts shoved into you, but don't forget what He had to go through.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Schweik

“Here, for the greater part, all logic was in abeyance and it was red tape which was victorious, it was red tape which throttled, it was red tape which caused lunacy, it was red tape which made a fuss, it was red tape which chuckled, it was red tape which threatened and never pardoned.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Schweik

“The Archduke was done for on the spot. You know, people didn't ought to mess about with revolvers. They're dangerous things, that they are. Not long ago there was another gentleman down our way larking about with a revolver and he shot a whole family as well as the house porter, who went to see who was shooting on the third floor.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Schweik

“Then she sent Schweik for lunch and wine. And before he returned, she put on a filmy gown which made her extremely attractive and alluring. At lunch she drank a bottle of wine and smoked several Memphis cigarettes. And while Schweik was in the kitchen feasting on army bread which he soaked in a glass of brandy she retired to rest.

"Schweik," she shouted from the bedroom. "Schweik!"

Schweik opened the door and beheld the young lady in an enticing attitude among the cushions.

"Come here."

He stepped up to the bed, and with a peculiar smile she scrutinized his sturdy build. Then, she pulled aside the thin covering which had hitherto concealed her person.

And so it came about that when the lieutenant returned from the barracks, the good soldier Schweik was able to inform him:

"Beg to report, sir, I carried out all the lady's wishes and treated her courteously, just as you instructed me."

"Thank you, Schweik," said the lieutenant. "And did she want many things done?"

"About six," replied Schweik.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Could you measure the diameter of the globe?"

"No, that I couldn't, sir," answered Schweik, "but now I'll ask you a riddle, gentlemen. There's a three-storied house with eight windows on each story. On the roof there are two gables and two chimneys. There are two tenants on each story. And now, gentlemen, I want you to tell me in what year the house porter's grandmother died?”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“You're right,' said the corporal. 'It serves editors like that right. They only stir the people up. Last year when I was still only a lance-corporal I had an editor under me and he called me nothing else but a disaster for the army, but when I taught him unarmed drill and he sweated, he always used to say: "Please respect the human being in me." But I gave him hell for his human being when the order was "flat down" and there were a lot of puddles in the barracks courtyard.
...
As I said, he was always on about his "human being" and nothing else. Once when he was reflecting over a puddle in which he had to plop down when he did his "flat down" I said to him: "When you're always talking about a human being even when you're in the mud remember that man was created out of the dust of the ground and it must have been O.K. for him.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“At that moment Švejk looked as if he had fallen down from the sky from some other planet and he was now looking with naïve wonder at a new world where people were demanding from him idiotic nonsense which he had never heard of before . . . .”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“There was a magnificent legal staff, a mechanism such as is possessed by every state before its political, economic and moral collapse.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Schweik

“Schweik inspected the provost-marshal's office. The impression which it produced could scarcely be called a favorable one, especially with regard to the photographs on the walls. They were photographs of the various executions carried out by the army in Galicia and Serbia. Artistic photographs of cottages which had been burned down and of trees, the branches of which were burdened with hanging bodies. There was one particularly fine photograph from Serbia showing a whole family which had been hanged. A small boy with his father and mother. Two soldiers with bayonets were guarding the tree on which the execution had been carried out, and an officer was standing victoriously in the foreground smoking a cigarette.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“The night spent in the detention barracks will always be one of Schweik's fondest memories.

Next door to Number 16 was a cell for solitary confinement, a murky den from which issued, during that night, the wailing of a soldier who was locked up in it and whose ribs were being systematically broken for some disciplinary offence.

When the wailing stopped, there could be heard in Number 16 the crunching noise made by the fleas as they were caught between the fingers of the prisoners.

Above the door in an aperture in the wall an oil lamp, provided with wire netting to protect it, gave a faint light and much smoke. The smell of the oil blended with the natural effluvia of unwashed bodies and with the stench from the bucket.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“Приготовления к отправке людей на тот свет всегда производились именем бога или другого высшего существа, созданного человеческой фантазией.”
― Ярослав Гашек, The Good Soldier Švejk

“(...) Então lá o enforcámos, mas só ficou pendurado por alguns segundos, que a corda rompeu-se e ele caiu ao chão, mas logo veio a si e se pôs a gritar para mim: «Senhor general, vou para casa, já me enforcaram, e de acordo com a lei não posso ser enforcado duas vezes pela mesma coisa.»(...)”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“- Não leves o teu servidor a julgamento, pois nenhum homem se justificará perante ti se não lhe concederes o perdão de todos os seus pecados, pelo que te rogo que não lhe tornes muito pesado o teu veredicto. Peço a tua ajuda e encomendo nas tuas mãos, Senhor, o meu espírito.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“- Já estou farto disto - exclamou o segundo cabo.
- Então é um homem feliz - disse Svejk. - Algumas pessoas nunca se fartam.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk