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Quote by Sándor Márai

“Poverty and sickness have this miraculous power of completely changing one’s priorities; one’s sentimental and psychological values go out the window.”

Quote by Sándor Márai

Book:La mujer justa
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Work

La mujer justa

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Author

Sándor Márai

Sándor Márai was a Hungarian writer renowned for his profound literary style and insightful observations on historical changes. His works extensively explore the conflicts between individuals and the times, as well as the common human experience. more

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“I am here because I worked too hard and too long not to be here. But although I told the university that I would walk across the stage to take my diploma, I won’t. At age fifty-seven, I’m too damned old, and I’d look ridiculous in this crowd. From where I’m standing in the back of the hall, I can see that I am at least two decades older than most of the parents of these kids in their black caps and gowns. So I’ll graduate with this class, but I won’t walk across the stage and collect my diploma with them; I’ll have the school send it to my house. I only want to hear my name called. I’ll imagine what the rest would have been like. When you’ve had a life like mine, you learn to do that, to imagine the good things. The ceremony is about to begin. It’s a warm June day and a hallway of glass doors leading to the parking lot are open, the dignitaries march onto the stage, a janitor slams the doors shut, one after the other. That banging sound. It’s Christmas Day 1961 and three Waterbury cops are throwing their bulk against our sorely overmatched front door. They are wearing their long woolen blue coats and white gloves and they swear at the cold. They’ve finally come for us, in the dead of night, to take us away, just as our mother said they would.”

PovertyFoster CareNeglected Children
Book:No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care.
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“For the first time in my life, I was eating well and from plates—glass plates, no less, not out of the frying pan because somebody lost all the plates in the last move. Now when we ate, we sat at a fine round oak table in sturdy chairs that matched. No one rushed through the meal or argued over who got the biggest portion, and we ate three times a day.”

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Book:No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
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“Let's think of that moment when a woman washed the feet of Jesus with the nard, so expensive: it is a religious moment, a moment of gratitude, a moment of love. And he [Judas] stands apart with bitter criticism: 'But this could have been used for the poor!' This is the first reference that I have found, in the Gospel, to poverty as an ideology. The ideologue does not know what love is, because he does nt know how to give himself.”

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Book:Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday
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