Grigor Parlichev

"When […] we had crossed the border between Turkey and Greece, a Greek trader, my fellow traveler, dismounted from his horse and kissed the soil. “We have trodden upon Hellenic ground,” he said.—My God! How red this ground is!—Yes! Because it is saturated with blood! I immediately made some verses, which I also declaimed with a prophetic inspiration. My intoxication intensified when I first saw the famous Parthenon from a distance."

"In Greek I sang like a swan, now in Slavic I cannot even sing like a donkey."

"We, Bulgarians, have been so abused and despised by other nationalities that it is high time we regained our dignity. When one reads our folk songs, in which every beauty is called a Greek woman, then one will instinctively conclude that wretched self-contempt is a national characteristic of the Bulgarian. It is high time we prove ourselves men among men. Bulgarian industriousness is rarely to be found among other nationalities; it has ennobled us, and it will be our salvation. . . . Having listened to the abuses heaped upon all the Bulgarians, I have lived all my life with the idea that I was a nonentity. The same thought has kept me away from the highest circles of society without which no one has ever become a famous citizen, or a man of letters. It is true that a proud man comes to no good, but it is also true that he who despises himself is a suicide."