Nikolaj Velimirović

“ Between your generosity and Serbia's suffering, between your medicaments and her wounds, between your bread and her hunger, there stands a hedge of Germano-Bulgar bayonets. All that you can do is to save Serbia on the islands, and, if possible, to hurry to liberate Serbia's country from the darkest slavery in which she was ever plunged. Serbia on the islands—it seems so—will be the only population of the future Serbia. Those who escaped from the Germano-Bulgar annihilation will be the people who will enter into the Promised Land, into free Serbia. ”

“ Work and prayer are two eyes on the same face. The man who works only, without praying, has one eye only; and the man who prays without working only has one eye too. The man who neither works nor prays has no eyes, and walks in darkness.
Neither be boastful of life nor fearful of death. Death is conditioned by life, and life by death.
You can kill me, but my son will live; you can kill my son, but my soul will live.
The Kingdom of God is coming as quietly as the moonlight, and it will come fully when men learn not to live in convulsions and not to die in convulsions. ”

“ If we Serbs look upon the English power on this planet, and then look and see our own less than modest place on the globe, we must unwillingly exclaim in the words of the Psalmist: O Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?—or with a little change: O England, what is Serbia, that thou art mindful of her? And the poor sons of Serbia, that thou visitest them?
A small strip of land with five million inhabitants and without seaboard. A peasant people devoted to agriculture and to nature, to the forest and cattle, to songs and tales. A past full of glory, of blood and sins. ”

“ Put yourselves, gentlemen, in the chair of a judge, and I will confess to you all the sins of Serbia. Serbia sinned and suffered. Her sins have been her hell, her sufferings—her purgatory. I don't pray you to forgive Serbia, but only to compare justly her sins with her sufferings. The Serbs sinned against all the ten commandments, it is true, but still regarded the ten commandments as the standard which is better than a nation's doings. Although the people said beautifully: "A grain of truth is better than a ton of lies," still the lie, like a parasite, had its nest in Serbia as elsewhere. ”

“ Our ancestors lived in blood and walked in blood. Our five hundred years' long slavery had only two colours—red and black.
And yet I will not accuse the Turks but ourselves. Neither our kings of old, nor our ancestors before the enslavement set us the example of killing kings. Rather the strangers that conquered and ruled our country set us such an example. But it is our fault for having followed an abominable example like that. I confess our sins before you, and pray: Forgive us, good brothers! Forgive us, if you can. God will not forgive us. That is the belief of our people. ”

“ Did not your greatest national poet, Schiller, glorify William Tell, who killed Gesler, the Austrian tyrannous ruler in Switzerland? Why do you, who adore Schiller, and who praise William Tell's deed, blame the Serbian boy, Princip, who did the same thing in killing Franz Ferdinand, the tyrant of Bosnia, his fatherland? And after all, shall a whole nation, which was as surprised by the affair in Sarajevo as anyone in the world, be crushed because of the crime of one man? ”

“ By this protection of Serbia, as well as of all the little and oppressed nations in Europe and Asia, you will do more for the glory of your country than by any extension of its frontier or accumulation of riches. Serbia suffers and still hopes. Serbia's hopes go to God, crossing this island of yours, crossing your hearts and souls, as the bridge between her and God. Serbia hopes to be free with all her brothers, who are suffering under the manifold yokes of merciless strangers. Serbia militans did every possible thing you expected her to do. ”

“ That is why I am protesting before you, valiant sons and daughters of Great Britain, the heirs of the most valuable heritage that ever a nation could call its own. Serbian life in peace time is the most eloquent accusation and the mightiest protest against the crime of two great Christian Kaisers. These two Christian Kaisers conquered Serbia by their iron and mercilessness, and bound Serbia's throat so horribly that in Serbia there is now air and light only for the conquerors and not for the conquered. Breath-less and breadless, Serbia cannot protest, but I can. ”

“ A king carried on a stretcher through the rocky desert of Albania,—a loyal parliament which refused to make a separate peace with the enemy even in the darkest hour of national tragedy,—an honest government which did everything possible to save the country, and which, when the country was nearly conquered, exclaimed through its President: "It is better to die in beauty than to live in shame!"—a fearless army, which for three years only knew victory, now watching in snow on the mountains of Montenegro and Albania, and lodging in the dens of wolves and eagles. ”

“ It is Life and Death, and God over both.
The moonlight accentuates the silence of the churchyard, the sunshine the clamour of the market-place.
By our good works we help God very little, and by our evil deeds we do Him no harm. But by our good works we help ourselves, and by our evil deeds we harm ourselves. Nevertheless, do good not for your own sake, but for God's, so that your joy may be greater and your determination more lasting. ”

“ The aim of this volume is to give to the English-speaking people some glimpses into the past struggles, sufferings and hopes of the Serbian nation. I have tried to describe the Serbian life in light, in its peace, its peaceful work, its songs and prayers; in darkness, in its slavery, its sins, its resistance to evil and battle for freedom.
It is only the peoples which suffer themselves that can understand and sympathise deeply with the Serbian soul. ”

“ Loyalty to friends, devotion to our pledged word, fidelity to the signed and unsigned treaties were always considered in Serbia as sacred duties in the conscience of the people. Our morale is not something that was learned in the schools—do not forget we had no schools for centuries—but rather an inherited treasure which every man was obliged to keep in great brilliancy. It is not a morale supported by learning, sophisms and quotations, it is an elementary power which is not a possession, but which has possession of everybody. ”

“ A little island of the Serbian refugees is formed in Greece, and also in Italy, in France, in England and in America. And what happened with the ship of the Serbian nation? She plunged to the bottom of a hell of darkness and suffering. The people from the neutral countries coming now from Serbia describe Serbia as a silent grave, her towns with deserted streets, with plundered or shut-up shops, her villages under a nightmare of starvation. There are only children and women at home, and very soon there will be no more either children or women. ”

“ For whose cause indeed is Belgium's and Serbia's, if not God's cause? I wonder who would protect all the oppressed in the world if not this country, in which God's word is more taught and learned than in any other, and which is endowed with all good gifts that God can give to mortals? Yet fighting for God's cause, one fights best for one's own. Yes, we fight always best for our own cause when we have it least in sight. England entered this war not after a long calculation ”

“ Some of our neighbours may be against that, but all their opposing effort will be in vain. Every intrigue against the Serbian ideals of freedom and unity cannot effect a suppression, but only a short prolongation of the period of its realisation. Behold, the time has come, the fruit has grown ripe. All the Serbian race has now been plunged into slavery. United to-day in slavery, they have now only one wish—to be united to-morrow in Freedom. ”

“ For five hundred years the Serbian soul suffered and believed. Suffering sometimes breaks the belief. But the Serbian suffering strengthened the belief of the Serbian people. With belief came hope, with hope strength; and so the Serbs endured the hardest and darkest slavery ever recorded in history, not so much by their physical strength as by the strength of their soul. Besides, it was a great temptation for the Serbs to abandon the Christian faith and to accept the faith of the Crescent. Under this condition only, the Turks promised freedom to the Serbs and equal rights. ”

“ Seeing, suffering, and death are three teachers of men. Seeing makes men wise, suffering makes them wiser, and death makes them wisest of all.
The finest music of hearts and stars is heard only in the silence of death.
In every humble superstition there is greater beauty than in any vain-glorious wisdom.
Man's greatest wisdom is nearer the wisdom of the horse than it is to the wisdom of God. ”

“ But seemingly England sent her troops to Serbia more to protect her honour than her Dominions, more to help Serbia than to defend Egypt and India. The number of these troops and the time when they arrived in Serbia indicate that. Hundreds of miles the Serbs had been driven back by the enemy before the British forces reached the Serbo-Greek frontier. But still they reached the Serbian land, they fought on Serbian soil and shed their noble blood defending that soil. Serbia will rather forget herself than the English lives sacrificed for her in such a catastrophic moment of her history. ”

“ But they fell into slavery in the same way as Serbia, Greece, Roumania and Croatia. The only country in the Balkans which surrendered without any resistance was Bulgaria. The only country in the Balkans that never was conquered by the Turks was Montenegro. Poor Montenegro, a skeleton of rocky mountains, has shown during five hundred years more heroic beauty and idealistic enthusiasm than many great empires in Asiatic and European history, which fought their selfish battles for power and comfort, and have been respected and adored merely because of their numbers and dimensions. ”

“ A man is like a drop of water, but mankind is like the ocean. A drop of water cannot endure a look of the sun, but the ocean bears iron and lead.
A man is like one blade of grass. Mankind is like a meadow. A traveller going along does not see the blade, but the meadow rejoices his sight.
A man's life is not one man's life, but is the life of mankind so closely interwoven that it resembles the carpet covering the floor of a room. ”

“ Suffering from surrounding nature is not the worst,—nature can be governed by us; nor the suffering from God,—God can be touched by our prayer; but the worst of all is our suffering from ourselves. Thousands and thousands of serpents live in Serbia. Yet all the serpents throughout the Serbian history, from the time of the Druids on this island till the time of Tennyson and Kipling, effected not such a poisonous devastation of men and cattle in Serbia as lately a host of invaders did, who boastfully regarded them-selves to be at the summit of human civilisation. ”

“ The fool is wisest when he sleeps; the wise man is most foolish when he dances.
When young men stand at the bier of an old man, it is pathetic; if old men stand at the bier of a young man, it is grievous; but God sees all and keeps silent. Why should you lament?
If you kill a solitary man, his kinsmen from the other world will persecute you.
Nobody can forever conceal what is good in you, nor can you yourself conceal what is evil.
There is no real death except the death of the soul.
There is no real joy except the joy of a righteous man. ”

“ A Serbian boy killed the Crown Prince of Austria. Therefore Austria pretended to think that Serbia must lose her independence. To punish Serbia for the crime in Sarajevo, Austria sent the famous ultimatum to Serbia in the summer of 1914, asking nothing less than what Shylock asked from Antonio—his life. To punish Serbia, Germany made an alliance with the Bulgars, and sent her troops and her iron—the best product of their culture—to destroy the Serbian state, to devastate the Serbian country, and to take more than a million of human lives for the life of the Austrian Crown Prince. ”

“ It is an exaggerated love for independence. It is a virtue as every honest love is a virtue, but it becomes a sin if exaggerated. It is a brilliant quality like the sunshine in the time of fighting against the common enemy, but it is a sin in peace time when organised efforts for the social welfare are required. This spirit of independence, the independence from enemies as well as from friends, has considerably disturbed our social life and progress-during the last century. Now, by this greatest of our sins and greatest of our virtues as well, we Serbs differed chiefly from our neighbours. ”