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Quotes by Russian Authors
"We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well."
"For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime."
"I mean that at least 80% of the Russian people feel destitute. It's the people who had their past and future taken from them - they don't get paid - many of them face a wall. They have nowhere to go."
"First of all I would make about 80% of the people law-abiding citizens again. The policy which is carried out now makes every entrepreneur and businessman a thief against his own will."
"Thousands of mercenaries, who have trained in camps on the territory of Chechnya as well as come in from abroad, are actually preparing to impose extremist ideas on the whole world."
"Resolution 1441 does not give anyone the right to an automatic use of force. Russia believes that the Iraqi problem should be regulated by the Security Council, which carries the main responsibility for ensuring international security."
"The feelings resembled memories, but memories of what? Apparently one can remember things that have never happened."
"My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice."
"And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?"
"Literature becomes the living memory of a nation."
"My brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side "a little happier, anyway" and children and all animals, if you yourself were nobler than you are now. It's all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin."
"...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them."
"I would wake up in Moscow or somewhere else, my heart beating fast, feeling bitter and helpless."
"This demonstration of power, indifferent to the law, is highly dangerous."
"Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others."
"Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?"
"Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you who you are."
"The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible."
"With no doubt Al Hussain was one of the greatest rebels, for correcting the path of rulers who deviated from the right path. He, by his stance honorably acquired martyrdom martyrdom that free people wish to acquire."
"A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths."
"I've been playing against older and stronger competition my whole life. It has made me a better tennis player and able to play against this kind of level despite their strength and experience."
"Kalganov ran back into the front hall, sat down in a corner, bent his head, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry. He sat like that and cried for a long time--cried as though he were still a little boy and not a man of twenty... 'What are these people, what sort of people can there be after this!' he kept exclaiming incoherently, in bitter dejection, almost in despair. At that moment he did not even want to live in the world. 'Is it worth it, is it worth it!' the grieved young man kept exclaiming."
"Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible."
"In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!"
"Doesn't there, in fact, exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his own very best interests, or - not to violate logic - some best good ... which is more important and higher than any other good, and for the sake of which man is prepared if necessary to go against all the laws, against, that is, reason, honour, peace and quiet, prosperity - in short against all those fine and advantageous things - only to attain that primary, best good which is dearer to him than all else?"
"What a man need is simply and solely independence volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead."
"I am not yet ready to be Tsar. I know nothing of the business of ruling."
"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love."
"When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life."
"Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it."
"She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance."
"The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well."
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