Ferdydurke Quotes
"Immaturity—what a compromising, disagreeable word!—became my war cry."
"A young aspirant to glory in 1930s literary Warsaw, Gombrowicz had already become legendary in the writers’ cafés for his madcap grimaces and poses."
"To irritate, Gombrowicz might have said, is to conquer."
"The more artificial we are, the closer we come to frankness."
"What a cheap and simplistic way of avoiding reality, what a shoddy escape into specious loftiness!"
"The truly Adult were sufficiently sharp and clear-sighted to see through this, and that anyone incessantly pursued by the brat within had no business appearing in public without the brat."
"A life unmindful of these bonds, a life that does not evolve in unbroken continuity from one phase to another is like a house that is being built from the top down, and must inevitably end in a schizophrenic split of the inner self."
"The more dull and narrow-minded they are, the more urgent and compelling are their opinions."
"To brush against a higher and more mature realm and yet be unable to penetrate it, to be but a step from refinement, elegance, wisdom, dignity, from mature judgments and mutual respect, from hierarchy and acknowledged values, and yet to merely lick those sweetmeats through the shop window, and have no access to these matters, to be superfluous?"
"Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it."
"Nobody cares, they’re bored by it all. Nobody can read more than two or three verses."
"We must shake this inability, we must, or woe to my child!"
"See, Gałkiewicz? There’s nothing like school to inculcate the adoration of great genius!"
"Reality was also spent, also wrung out, crumpled and ruined."
"Oh, give me one uncontorted face next to which I can feel the contortion of my own face."
"If nothing else works, that little finger will be pulled down by force!"
"It’s all one to me, whether it’s an old man or a child."
"One has to pay for kinkiness, you old fogey, but it’s tax-free."
"Humanity priced at forty-two zlotys ceases to be a Unity."
"In my time, young ladies… and what would Norwid say to this?"
"Who would ever believe that Mr. Youngblood’s subterranean giggling would restore my ability to resist them?"
"Nothing that is really tasty can be really awful."
"But quietly, quietly…9 Peeping and Further Incursion into Modernity."
"I trembled, and sweat poured off me as I realized that in this pilgrimage of mine I was descending, through a sequence of defeats, to the very bottom of hell."
"Only that which has bad taste is truly inedible."
"Indeed, that which I was about to undertake in the name of Maturity, and in order to free myself from the schoolgirl’s spell, would be an anti-culinary and a counter-palatable activity."
"And yet our first and foremost task is to relish, we must relish, relish, let the husband, wife, and children lie dying, let our heart be torn to shreds, as long as it’s done tastefully, yes, tastefully!"
"She realized that her daughter hadn’t gone to pieces at lunchtime."
"The awareness that he had been spied upon tumbled him into vulgar infantilism."
"However, realizing the nonsense of their movements now that the ball was gone, they pounced on each other with their claws."
"As a woman, she was at liberty to do so, and why not?"
"In these doorways there are only drafts, and I don’t fancy a farmhand in drafts."
"Their noses in their lecture notes, they eat hard-boiled eggs, shove the eggshells into their pockets, and breathe the dust of the big city."
"Learning in a peasant! A peasant turned lawyer or physician!"
"Who the devil fixed them like this—I’m sure if someone hadn’t put them up to it, they wouldn’t have spawned all this ugliness."
"It’s terrible that there’s no one nowadays who isn’t still at the age of immaturity."
"The sky is enormous. In the mist the horizon is blue-gray."
"I prefer crowds in a movie house to ozone in the fields."
"I grow and assume gigantic proportions, yet I weaken."
"They still wipe their noses with their fingers, and already they’re studying their lecture notes!"
"Their lo’dships eat like pigs and gorge ’emselves with sweets, then—bellies up they lie about and get sick from it all."
"Their lordships sucked the peasantry dry of their finances, but besides the fiscal sucking they carried on an infantile kind of sucking."
"No matter how harshly and mercilessly my uncle swore at the grooms, no matter how much, like a mommy, auntie let them kiss her hands with matriarchal kindliness."
"Valek will be kicked out on his ass!" Zygmunt said coldly to his father.
"I’m sorry, but I’m not in the habit of putting up with demoralized servants."
"What do you want?" he growled, pressing his face against the mosses, "what do you want?"
"Yer lo’dships!" he spat the words through his teeth, "yer lo’dships! Go away, go! You’re too—a lo’dship!"
"Yer lo’dship! Yer lo’dships, damn it! They won’t let oop! They’re curs! O Jesus! They’re twistin’ ya round too!"
"This is mine! Mine!" he repeated, hitting him against drawers, against edges, against ornaments and moldings.
"I can see that Bolshevik trends hold sway among the school youth," he spoke as if Kneadus were a revolutionary schoolboy and not a lover of another race.
"Your honorable lordships will teach him a lesson!"
"You weren’t stealing?" said Konstanty, and, stretching from his chair he again smacked him in the snoot.
"I’ll teach you to steal! I’ll teach you to steal!…"
"Man must have a well-rounded education, he must perfect himself in body and soul, a human being must always be beautiful!"
"Is someone walking about?" asked the butler with a somewhat plaintive voice.
"We’re young, we love each other… the world belongs to us!"
"I so wish that all people could be as content and happy as we are—and if they’re good, they will be happy."