Quotes by Russian Authors - Page 34

It’s truly interesting to observe how genetics works in families, and what a huge lottery it is to inherit some of our relatives’ appearance features.
Sahara Sanders
If you are really doing all this for your kids, then why are you so mean to them?
Dmitry Dyatlov
The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.
Leo Tolstoy
That's one huge puppy.
Ksenia Anske
Yes,” Curran said. “We’d like you to officiate.”“I’m sorry?”“We’d like you to marry us,” I said.Roman’s eyes went wide. He pointed to himself. “Me?”“Yes,” Curran said.“Marry you?”“Yes.”“You do know what I do, right?”“Yes,” I said. “You’re Chernobog’s priest.
Ilona Andrews
So far I had the god of evil and the god of terror on my side. My good-guy image was taking a serious beating. Maybe I should recruit some unicorns or kittens with rainbow powers to even us out.
Ilona Andrews
(Uncle) would remark that it was impossible to get by without such a (portentous and whimsical) tone when speaking of many things of this world, and especially of the things not entirely of this world.
Vladimir Odoyevsky
I glanced at Derek. The boy wonder didn't melt into a pile of goo, although his gaze was glued to Rowena's chest. Avoiding eye contact. Good strategy.
Ilona Andrews
Feeling my own humiliation in my heart like the sharp prick of a needle.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I have carried only a few ideas out of life's storm - and not one feeling. I have long lived according to the head, not the heart. I consider and analyze my personal passions and actions with a strict curiosity, but without sympathy. There are two people within me: one who lives in the full sense of the word, and the other who reasons and judges him.
Mikhail Lermontov
Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My objective is to create my own world and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are. We have forgotten how to relate emotionally to art: we treat it like editors, searching in it for that which the artist has supposedly hidden. It is actually much simpler than that, otherwise art would have no meaning. You have to be a child—incidentally children understand my pictures very well, and I haven’t met a serious critic who could stand knee-high to those children. We think that art demands special knowledge; we demand some higher meaning from an author, but the work must act directly on our hearts or it has no meaning at all.
Andrei Tarkovsky
For this gloomy beast within my breast - A heart. But the thing is,We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years.In the morning we shall find outWho has died in the night.
Anna Akhmatova
I know: yes, no, even I must tear offThe delicate daisy petals.Everyone on earth is destined to feelThe torments of love.
Anna Akhmatova
His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss.
Vladimir Nabokov
For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?
Leo Tolstoy
Why is it that a convict never saves his money? Well, not only is it difficult for him to keep it, but prison life is so miserable that a man, of his very nature, thirsts for freedom of action. His position in society makes him so irregular a being that the idea of swallowing up his capital in orgies, of intoxicating himself with revelry, seems to him quite natural if only he can procure himself one moment's forgetfulness.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process...And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they did not realize the full horrors of it, and did not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on...The land so much needed by men was tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc.
Leo Tolstoy
If you are working inwardly, Nature will help you. For the man who is working, Nature is sister of charity; she brings him what he needs for his work. If you need money for your work, even if you do nothing to get it, the money will come to you from all sides.
G.I. Gurdjieff
But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive.
Leo Tolstoy
We hold further that Communism is not only desirable, but that existing societies, founded on Individualism, are inevitably impelled in the direction of Communism. The development of Individualism during the last three centuries is explained by the efforts of the individual to protect himself from the tyranny of Capital and of the State. For a time he imagined, and those who expressed his thought for him declared, that he could free himself entirely from the State and from society. "By means of money," he said, "I can buy all that I need." But the individual was on a wrong tack, and modern history has taught him to recognize that, without the help of all, he can do nothing, although his strong-boxes are full of gold.
Pyotr Kropotkin
What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even confers talent. And it will do so until the end of the world.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I will tell you one thing that will make you rich for life. There are two struggles: an Inner-world struggle and an Outer-world struggle...you must make an intentional contact between these two worlds; then you can crystallize data for the Third World, the World of the Soul.
G.I. Gurdjieff
I have just awoken, having dreamed of music. The final chord fades away within me while I try to focus on individuals amid the living, breathing mass packed into this vast waiting room, in this mixture of sleep and weariness.
Andreï Makine
Realized dreams often turn into nightmares.
Lera Auerbach
Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.
Leo Ornstein
I would say that Op 31 had brought music just to the very edge … I just simply drew back and said, “beyond that lies complete chaos”.
Leo Ornstein
I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something.
Dmitri Shostakovich
An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song’s sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words.
Boris Pasternak
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.
Leo Tolstoy
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy
And another thing about German symphonic development: [it's] just like German philosophy, all worked out and systematized. When a German thinks, he reasons his way to a conclusion. Our Russian brother, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and then might amuse himself with reasoning. Just keep one thing in mind. The creative act carries within itself its own aesthetic laws. When an artist revises, it means he is dissatisfied. When he revises what is already satisfying, he is Germanizing, chewing over what has [already] been said. We Russians are not cud chewers; we are omnivores!
Modest Mussorgsky
You don’t want a cheap Strat. Everybody has it. What you want is a rare model. The one that’s very hard to get. And only a guitar you’ve put a lot of effort into buying would end up being the most important in your collection. Do you get it?
Polina Traore
And in the depths of music, I didn’t find the answer,And again there was silence, and again the ghost of summer.
Anna Akhmatova
As his hands fell upon the keyboard, it was still possible to believe a beautiful harmony had been formed at random, in spite of him. But a second later the music came surging out, the power of it sweeping away all doubts, voices, sounds, wiping away the fixed grins and exchanged glances, pushing back the walls, dispersing the light of the reception room out into the nocturnal immensity of the sky beyond the windows.He did not feel as if he were playing. He was advancing through a night, breathing in its delicate transparency, made up as it was of an infinite number of facets of ice, of leaves, of wind. He no longer felt any pain. No fear about what would happen. No anguish or remorse. The night through which he was advancing expressed this pain, this fear, and the irremediable shattering of the past, but this had all become music and now only existed through its beauty.
Andreï Makine
Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that anyone can produce at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand times leave us cold, and the thousand and first time they set us thrilling and weeping.
Leo Tolstoy
My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov
There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? For his hopes for the future? Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him, and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was. This contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.
Leo Tolstoy
The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?
Leo Tolstoy
If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.
Anna Akhmatova
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Igor Stravinsky
The artist must forget the audience, forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music.Then, the music speaks through the performance,and the performer and the listener will walk togetherwith the soul of the composer, and withGod.
Mstislav Rostropovich
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position".
Leo Tolstoy
He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything, simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to be quite the opposite.
Leo Tolstoy
Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.
Leo Tolstoy
I've never really had any luck with women in my life. Well, at first I was fairly lucky. Then all of a sudden, they all thought they had to get married for some reason. And not to me. It's especially strange, because I almost always fell in love with the very smart girls. Even that didn't help matters. I don't see how any intelligent person could seriously want to get married.
Max Frei
Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.
Leo Tolstoy
I was overpowered by the mere sensation of that dream and it alone survived in my sorely wounded heart.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The wind swept the snow aside, ever faster and thicker, as if it were trying to catch up with something, and Yurii Andreievich stared ahead of him out of the window, as if he were not looking at the snow but were still reading Tonia’s letter and as if what flickered past him were not small dry snow crystals but the spaces between the small black letters, white, white, endless, endless.
Boris Pasternak
There's a threshold of pain, a person loses consciousness in order not to die. And there's a threshold of grief, it suddenly stops hurting. And you feel nothing. Nothing at all.
Mikhail Shishkin
Whatever may be my activity in a given moment (whether I am composing, or whether I am making love . . .), I feel pleasure if there is an obstacle placed in my path but one not greater than my ability to overcome. If circumstances paralyze my energy, I suffer. From this point of view, pleasure and pain accompany every moment of our life, even if we try to disregard them.
Alexander Scriabin
Now I understand that this passion for pain, even in the torture of martyrdom, represents the haste and impatience to no longer be interrupted and disturbed by the evil that can come from this side (meaning this life).
Lou Andreas-Salomé
To each, or about each, of his colleagues he had said at one time or other, something... something impossible to recall in this or that case and difficult to define in general terms -- some careless bright and harsh trifle that had grazed a stretch of raw flesh.
Vladimir Nabokov