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Quotes by Russian Authors
"The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions."
"If you want to work on your acting, work on yourself."
"Thought-he told himself quietly-is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choice was left to him. Thought sets one's purpose and the way to reach it. In the matter of his life being torn piece by piece out of him, he was to have no voice, no purpose, no way, no defense."
"Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology."
"Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their ideal Form."
"I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness. For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century."
"No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place."
"The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me."
"To destroy the life that dwells in othersis beyond your power. The life of those you have slainhas vanished from your eyes, but is not destroyed. Youthought to lengthen your own life and to shorten theirs,but you cannot do this. Life knows neither time norspace. The life of a moment, and the life of a thousandyears: your life and the life of all the visible and invisiblebeings in the world, are equal. To destroy life, or to alterit, is impossible; for life is the one thing that exists. Allelse, but seems to us to be."
"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love."
"I think that people ran out of oxygen and don't really know what happened up there, maybe some of them just made things up because they weren't sure what had happened."
"I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design."
"You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings."
"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."
"A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.... Once you've said 'percentage' there's nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word... maybe we might feel more uneasy...."
"You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached."
"What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside."
"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."
"The instinct of self-preservation and the urge to self-destruction are equally strong in man! The Devil has equal a sway over humanity as God until a time still unknown to us."
"An empty canvas is a living wonder... far lovelier than certain pictures."
"It's that I have a good personality and am a good tennis player."
"I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council."
"A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat."
"A drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich entertained the public."
"Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men."
"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."
"There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends."
"One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry."
"Borkin: Ladies and gentlemen, why are you so glum? Sitting there like a jury after it's been sworn in! ... Let's think up something. What would you like? Forfeits, tug of war, catch, dancing, fireworks?"
"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."
"When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the "freedom of the press" goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism."
"I feel that my relationship with Kasparov now is much the same as it had been before the match - good. As for his reaction, well it can't be nice to lose your title after so long, but he was very generous."
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