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Quotes by Russian Authors
"If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen."
"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."
"But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive."
"All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate."
"I love sport because I love life, and sport is one of the basic joys of life."
"MASHA. Just think, I am already beginning to forget her face. People will not remember us either. They will forget.VERSHININ. Yes. They will forget. That is our fate, you can't do anything about it. The things which to us seem serious, significant, very important, - the time will come - they will be forgotten or they will seem of no consequence."
"One must be a somebody before they can have a enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force."
"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will."
"For me and my friends, for people who think the way I do over there, for all ordinary Soviet citizens, America evokes a mixture of admiration and compassion...You're a country of the future, a young country, with yet untapped possiblities, enormous territory, great breadth of spirit, generosity, magnanimity. But these qualities-strength, generosity, and magnanimity-are usually combined in a man and even in a whole country with trustfulness. And this has already done you a disservice several times."
"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and no one can stop him."
"As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings."
"Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote."
"You're never able to please everybody, especially when you're transforming a country like Russia."
"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."
"It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them.Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!"
"Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying."
"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love."
"With total rapture and delight he talks about the birds which he can see from his prison window, and which he had never noticed before, when he was a minister. Now of course, after he's been released, he doesn't notice the birds anymore, just as beforehand. In the same way you won't notice Moscow, when you actually live there."
"Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views."
"Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord."
"That's why there's a devil-to judge the priests."
"A drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich entertained the public."
"I shot with it a lot. I still do now. That is why I am hard of hearing."
"But life is a great school. It thrashes and bangs and teaches you."
"Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones."
"I offer my expertise and experience for hire in order to help a group of people reach the summit."
"For me art and chess are closely related, both are forms in which the self finds beauty and expression."
"Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development."
"Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference."
"Andrei, did you like the opera?""Not particularly.""Andrei, do you see what you're missing?""I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless.""Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?""No. But I enjoyed it.""The music?""No. The way you listened to it."
"Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors."
"It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them."
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