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Quotes by Russian Authors
"With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better."
"But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all-but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now-this very instant-your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man-and that this is certain, certain!"
"One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man."
"To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love-because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone."
"One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake."
"I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation."
"It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to acknowledge the reality of these signs."
"The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around? "Darling, what do you mean? "There wasn't a person there who enjoyed it," she said, her voice lifeless, "or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant."Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay." How? By being stupid?"
"The strength of the playing ability is much more important. Only if the strength of the opponent's playing ability is comparable, does the game develop."
"I knew there were a lot of friends out there, and I wanted to be with them."
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
"For the whole of Western Europe, I know the business community quite good."
"Once he had selected the path he was going down he really had to stick with it in a 16 game match. He had to try and hit in the one direction but unfortunately for him - though fortunately for me! - he hit in the wrong direction."
"Ivanov: Gentlemen, you've again set up a drinking shop in my study... I have asked each and every one of you a thousand times not to do that... Look now, you've spilt vodka on a paper... and there are crumbs... and gherkins... It's disgusting!"
"In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning."
"The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
"You are an unusual, brilliant child who has not seen enough of life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity."
"If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war."
"Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?"
"Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."
"Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires...Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform."
"Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception."
"Mozart's music is like an X-ray of your soul - it shows what is there, and what isn't."
"We keep imagining eternity as an idea that cannot be grasped, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, imagine suddenly that there will be one little room there, something like a village bathhouse, covered with soot, with spiders in all the corners, and that's the whole of eternity. I sometimes fancy something of that sort."
"War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves."
"I have continued to work at different things, and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something. I did it because I happened to be where I was."
"It's precisely in despair that you find the most intense pleasure, especially if you are already powerfully conscious of the hopelessness of your predicament."
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