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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?"
"He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them."
"Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind."
"Whether he was acting ill or well he did not know, and far from laying down the law about it, he now avoided talking or thinking about it. Thinking about it led him into doubts and prevented him from seeing what he should and should not do. But when he did not think, but just lived, he unceasingly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge deciding which of two actions was the better and which the worse; and as soon as he did what he should not have done he immediately felt this. In this way he lived, not knowing or seeing any possibility of knowing what he was or why he lived in the world."
"People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature changes with the times."
"But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment."
"I'm a master of speaking silently-all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence."
"He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found his way to a solution of these questions in a conscious manner; now he could only feel. In place of dialectics life had arrived, and in his consciousness something of a wholly different nature must now work towards fruition."
"Beauty will save the world."
"What time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?"
"That they may believe you, you must say it as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalize them. They'll tell a story better than ours, and of course they'll believe themselves more than they would us..."
"One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity."
"I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea."
"But it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur."
"He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."
"Man holds the remedy in his own hands, and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice- that is an axiom."
"Though the children did not know Levin well and did not remember when they had last seen him, they did not feel towards him any of that strange shyness and antagonism so often felt by children towards grown-up people who 'pretend,' which causes them to suffer as painfully. Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it."
"He was a passionate adherent of the new ideas and of Speransky, and the busiest purveyor of news in Petersburg, one of those men who choose their opinions like their clothes-according to the fashion-but for that very reason seem the most vehement partisans."
"A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body."
"If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions."
"The loss of reason in war seems to me honorable, like the death of a sentry at his post."
"There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan's pride and murmuring against God.The Brothers KaramazovBook VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima."
"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."
"Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I."
"To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call 'human nature,' the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct."
"I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea."
"Well, do you suppose I made up my mind then that what I had seen was something sickening? Not a bit of it. 'If it was done with such assurance and everyone thought it was necessary, then they must have known something I didn't,' was what I thought, and I tried to find out what it was. But I couldn't, no matter how hard I exerted myself. And since I couldn't, I couldn't join the army as I'd planned to, and not only did I not join the army, I couldn't find a place for myself anywhere in society, and ended up being no good for anything, as you can see.'Oh yes, we know all about how you're no good for anything,' said one of us, 'But tell us: how many men would be no good for anything if it weren't for the likes of you?"
"...but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious."
"Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new."
"The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for persons who continually give in to them."
"At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future."
"All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
"Everything depends on upbringing."
"Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid."
"A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep."
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