Quotes by Russian Authors - Page 26

It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In olden days people were worse than us but knew much more than us.
Vladimir Odoyevsky
You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it--which is what matters most.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Seek ye not riches, seek but the society of good men.
Nikolai Gogol
If the first job one has in a given profession acts as a tuning fork for the career that follows, Frederick Thomas was attuned from the start to a pitch of the highest quality.
Vladimir Alexandrov
We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor.
Anton Chekhov
I've never really had any luck with women in my life. Well, at first I was fairly lucky. Then all of a sudden, they all thought they had to get married for some reason. And not to me. It's especially strange, because I almost always fell in love with the very smart girls. Even that didn't help matters. I don't see how any intelligent person could seriously want to get married.
Max Frei
Create your own “LUCK” in your personal life—instead of relying on “fate” and hoping that your happiness will spontaneously materialize sometime and somehow, as if by magic.Be the “magician” of your own destiny. Take control of your own fate.
Sahara Sanders
Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities.
Vladimir Nabokov
To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
Anne-Sophie Swetchine
Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
Leo Tolstoy
They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.
Lev Shestov
In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday, and a fire is an entertainment. A scratch embellishes an empty face.
Maxim Gorky
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Vladimir Nabokov
And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My turn shall also come:I sense the spreading of a wing.
Osip Mandelstam
All happy families resemble one another every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy
... Now to die of griefwould mean, I'm afraid, to die belatedly, while latecomersare unwelcome, particularly in the future. ...
Joseph Brodsky
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?
Leo Tolstoy
I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.
Anton Chekhov
To be in Christ means to be like Him, to make ours the very movement of His life. And as He "ever liveth to make intercession: for all "that come unto God by him" (Heb 7:25), so we cannot help accepting His intercession as our own. The Church is not a society for escape—corporately or individually—from this world to taste of the mystical bliss of eternity. Communion is not a "mystical experience": we drink of the chalice of Christ, and He gave Himself for the life of the world. The bread on the paten and the wine in the chalice are to remind us of the incarnation of the Son of God, of the cross and death. And thus it is the very joy of the Kingdom that makes us remember the world and pray for it. It is the very communion with the Holy Spirit that enables us to love the world with the love of Christ. The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity and the moment of truth: here we see the world in Christ, as it really is, and not from our particular and therefore limited and partial points of view. Intercession begins here, in the glory of the messianic banquet, and this is the only true beginning for the Church's mission. It is when, "having put aside all earthly care," we seem to have left this world, that we, in fact, recover it in all its reality.
Alexander Schmemann
I have inflammation of the imagination.
Lera Auerbach
Writers are engineers of human souls.
Yury Olesha
Whatever they say about it, but being altruistic is not so simple for everyone. Not to look and sound like despotism, altruism must be learnt, and it’s a long way, which in fact begins from our egoism, for really, a human can’t love others if he doesn’t love himself first.
Lara Biyuts
An officer put me in my place from the first moment.I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word--without a warning or explanation--moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.
Leo Tolstoy
I realized that I'm a child."William looked point-blank at her chest. "No.
Ilona Andrews
But who are we, where do we come fromWhen all those yearsNothing but idle talk is leftAnd we are nowhere in the world?"= MEETING =
Boris Pasternak
They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.
Leo Tolstoy
I opened my veins. Unstoppablylife spurts out with no remedy.Now I set out bowls and plates.Every bowl will be shallow.Every plate will be small.And overflowing their rims,into the black earth, to nourishthe rushes unstoppablywithout cure, gushespoetry ...
Marina Tsvetaeva
What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!
Leo Tolstoy
Here you will meet singular side-whiskers, tucked with extraordinary and amazing art under the necktie, velvety whiskers, satiny whiskers, black as sable or coal, but, alas, belonging only to the foreign office. Providence has denied black side-whiskers to those serving in other departments; they, however great the unpleasantness, must wear red ones. Here you will meet wondrous mustaches, which no pen or brush is able to portray; mustaches to which the better part of a lifetime is devoted––object of long vigils by day and by night; mustaches on which exquisite perfumes and scents have been poured, and which have been anointed with all the most rare and precious sorts of pomades, mustaches which are wrapped overnight in fine vellum, mustaches which are subject to the most touching affection of their possessors and are the envy of passers-by. A thousand kinds of hats, dresses, shawls––gay-colored, ethereal, for which their owners' affection sometimes lasts a whole two days––will bedazzle anyone on Nevsky Prospect.
Nikolai Gogol
There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.
Sergei Lukyanenko
Everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. Only the dead have no sensations.
Konstantin Stanislavski
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.
Leon Trotsky
And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.
Leo Tolstoy
Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.
Nikolai Gogol
Think of me as an impetuous Hegel, drunk with power, and also, regular drunk.
Eugene Mirman
And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
Anton Chekhov
You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But if they have a flashlight, it means they're human and not some kind of monsters from the surface,' objected Artyom."I don't know what's worse," said Melnik, cutting off Artyom.
Dmitry Glukhovsky
All of us are pilgrims on this earth. I have even heard it said that the earth itself is a pilgrim in the heavens.
Maxim Gorky
I could have done even better, miss, and I'd know a lot more, if it wasn't for my destiny ever since childhood. I'd have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow. It spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: 'You opened her matrix,' he says. I don't know about her matrix, but I'd have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The flower, as he saw it, ruled over evil; it absorbed in itself all innocently shed blood (that is why it is so red) all tears and all the gall of humanity. It was an awful and mysterious being, the antitheses of God, an Ahriman presenting a most unassuming and innocent appearance. It was necessary to break it off and kill it. But this was not all; it was also necessary not to permit it at its death to discharge its evil upon the world.
Vsevolod Garshin
When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change.
Leo Tolstoy
As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.
Leo Tolstoy
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
Boris Pasternak
I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred-that hate which is only a hair's-breath from love, from the maddest love!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And speaking of this wonderful machine:[840] I’m puzzled by the difference b
Vladimir Nabokov
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
Leon Trotsky
How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself.("Thirty-Three Abominations")
Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal
If a man decides that it is better for him to resist the demands of a present feeble love, in the name of another, of a future manifestation, he deceives either himself or other people, and loves no one but himself. Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.
Leo Tolstoy
Others are not born bad or good... and neither are people, by the way.
Sergei Lukyanenko
From a shy timid girl I had become a woman of resolute character who could no longer be frightened by the struggle with troubles.
Anna Dostoevsky
The two stared together into a future that held as much pain as promise, as much sorrow as sunshine...
Ana Chapman
It's in giving yourself that you possess yourself
Lou Andeas-Salome
It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed or not possible to avoid making those that are required.
Ivan Goncharov
That there is in this world neither brains, nor goodness, nor good sense, but only brute force. Bloodshed. Starvation. Death. That there was not the slightest hope not even a glimmer of hope, of justice being done. It would never happen. No one would ever do it. The world was just one big Babi Yar. And there two great forces had come up against each other and were striking against each other like hammer and anvil, and the wretched people were in between, with no way out; each individual wanted only to live and not be maltreated, to have something to eat, and yet they howled and screamed and in their fear they were grabbing at each other’s throats, while I, little blob of watery jelly, was sitting in the midst of this dark world. Why? What for? Who had done it all? There was nothing, after all, to hope for! Winter. Night.
Anatoly Kuznetsov