Miklós Bánffy Quotes

...for a man is a Herdentier - an animal that always follows the herd, a gregarious animal - and quickly follow's its neighbour example.

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.

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.