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Quotes by Russian Authors
"And what is justice? The princess thought of that proud word 'justice'. All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and simple law-the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do with justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did."
"All happy families resemble one another every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them."
"Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it."
"A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body."
"Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth."
"What is music? What does it do to us? And why does it do to us what it does? People say that music has an uplifting effect on the soul: what rot! It isn't true. It's true that it has an effect, it has a terrible effect on me, at any rate, but it has nothing to do with any uplifting of the soul. Its effect on the soul is neither uplifting nor degrading - it merely irritates me."
"In the realm of the unknown, difficulties must be viewed as a hidden treasure! Usually, the more difficult, the better. It's not as valuable if your difficulties stem from your own inner struggle. But when difficulties arise out of increasing objective resistance, that's marvelous!"
"An officer put me in my place from the first moment.I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word--without a warning or explanation--moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me."
"I'm not asking you to do your best. I'm asking you to do your job.""
"Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise."
"It's easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence-such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence."
"You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light."
"If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love."
"Oh, he understood very well that for the meek soul of a simple Russian, exhausted by grief and hardship and, above all, by constant injustice and sin, his own or the world's, there was no stronger need than to find a holy shrine or a saint to prostrate himself before and to worship."
"Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him."
"I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God's shrine."
"The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations - and absolutely nothing more."
"No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon."
"Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them. I feel that others live up to me, if they want me..."
"Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely."
"A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule."
"Or perhaps it is because it is so NECESSARY for you to win. It is like a drowning man catching at a straw. You yourself will agree that, unless he were drowning he would not mistake a straw for the trunk of a tree."
"I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year."
"It's a law of survival, isn't it?-to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine."
"She found a dark satisfaction in pain-because that pain came from him."
"Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all."
"I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with everyday that passes. . . They change, they deny, they contradict- and they call it growth. At the end there is nothing left, nothing unreveresed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment? But Howard- one can imagine him living forever."
"When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of newspaper owners took him aside-at a city charity affair which all had to attend-and reproached him for what they called hid debasement of the public taste."It is not my function" said Wynand, "to help people preserve a self-respect they haven't got. You give them what they profess to like in public, I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best policy, gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to belive"."
"But it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one's position."
"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value - by choice; he has to learn to sustain it - by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues - by choice.A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."
"The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear."
"A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul."
"And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful."
"Brother, I'm not depressed and haven't lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter " this is what life is, herein lies its task."
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