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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism."
"I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies."
"A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."
"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will."
"HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself."
"I feel great. I feel younger. And I don't feel anything at all. I don't know who knows, but right now I'm, how, how many years have I, fifty five, something like that. Forty three years old. And I feel like seventeen, like twenty five years ago."
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."
"Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium."
"Man has the power to act as his own destroyer-and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."
"It has long been known for sure that the sight of tasty food makes a hungry man's mouth water; also lack of appetite has always been regarded as an undesirable phenomenon, from which one might conclude that appetite is essentially linked with the process of digestion."
"A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away."
"The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school."
"His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day."
"The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions."
"The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor."
"We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap."
"And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of another's body but only of one's own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile."
"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."
"Our experiments not only proved the existence of a nervous apparatus in the above-mentioned glands, but also disclosed some facts clearly showing the participation of these nerves in normal activity."
"I believe in full freedom for Christians of all denominations."
"Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do."
"Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love-he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires-boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose."
"Toate familiile fericite se aseamAƒnAƒ A®ntre ele. Fiecare familie nefericitAƒ este nefericitAƒ A®n felul ei."
"Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess - players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation."
"Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source the precondition of his productive work - pride is the result."
"Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions."
"But life is a great school. It thrashes and bangs and teaches you."
"We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is."
"Concerned that others were not coming onto the summit and because I had no radio link to those below me, I began to wonder if there were difficulties down the mountain. I made the decision to descend."
"The civilized world needs to think about a decision when single politicians are not allowed to stay in power."
"Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn."
"The courts are as a stage, people love to see attractive players."
"Look at Christ, my dear friend: His life was divine through and through, full of self-denial, and He did everything for mankind, finding His satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of His material being."
"For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation."
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