Quotes by Russian Authors - Page 47

Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life
Leo Tolstoy
I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.
Leo Tolstoy
The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.
Boris Pasternak
Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.
Leo Tolstoy
Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right."The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..."Sure, I know, it's true.But some truths are probably worse than lies.
Sergei Lukyanenko
What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?
Sergei Lukyanenko
There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
And where love ends, hate begins
Leo Tolstoy
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.
P.D. Ouspensky
The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.
Mikhail Bulgakov
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.
Leo Tolstoy
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass 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, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Boredom: the desire for desires.
Leo Tolstoy
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.
Leo Tolstoy
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
Leo Tolstoy
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
Leo Tolstoy
When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
...suffering and freedom have their limits...those limits are very near together.
Leo Tolstoy
You can't skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That's the easiest solution to the problem!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Escute mais isso. Por outro lado, forças jovens, frescas, sucumbem em vão por falta de apoio, e isso aos milhares, e isso em toda parte! Cem, mil boas ações e iniciativas que poderiam ser implementadas e reparadas com o dinheiro da velha, destinado a um mosteiro! Centenas, talvez milhares de existências encaminhadas; dezenas de famílias salvas da miséria, da desagregação, da morte, da depravação, das doenças venéreas - e tudo isso com o dinheiro dela. Mate-a e tome-lhe o dinheiro, para com sua ajuda dedicar-se depois a servir toda a humanidade e a uma causa comum: o que você acha, esse crime ínfimo não seria atenuado por milhares de boas ações? Por uma vida - milhares de vidas salvas do apodrecimento e da degeneração. Uma morte e cem vidas em troca - ora, isso é uma questão de aritimética.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
O principal é não mentir. Quem mente para si mesmo e dá ouvido à sua própria mentira chega a tal extremo que não consegue ver nenhuma verdade em si ou naqueles que o rodeiam e, por conseguinte, perde completamente o respeito por si e pelos outros. (...) Quem mente a si próprio pode ser o primeiro a ofender-se. Às vezes, é tão agradável uma pessoa se ofender, não é verdade? O indivíduo sabe que ninguém o injuriou, que tudo não passa de simples invenção, que ele próprio mentiu e exagerou apenas para criar um quadro, para fazer de um grão uma montanha - sabe tudo e, no entanto, se ofende. Ofende-se a ponto se sentir prazer na ofensa e, desse modo, atinge o verdadeiro ódio...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.''But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...''Life won't leave one alone as it is.
Leo Tolstoy
Herein lies the supreme wisdom, human and divine; and the task of philosophy consists in teaching men to submit joyously to Necessity which hears nothing and is indifferent to all.
Lev Shestov
We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.
Vladimir Nabokov
But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.
Bakunin
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
Leo Tolstoy
Light in comparison with darkness is a void.
Vladimir Nabokov
And so these refined parents rejected their five-year-old girl to all kinds of torture. They beat her, kicked her, flogged her, for no reason that they themselves knew of. The child’s whole body was covered in bruises. Eventually they devised a new refinement. Under the pretext that the child dirtied her bed (as though a five-year-old deep in her angelic sleep could be punished for that), they forced her to eat excrement, smearing it all over her face. And it was the mother that did it! And that woman would lock her daughter up in the outhouse until morning and she did so even on the coldest nights, when it was freezing. Just imagine the woman being able to sleep with the child’s cries coming from that outhouse! Imagine that little creature, unable to even understand what is happening to her, beating her sore little chest with her tiny fist, weeping hot, unresentful, meek tears, and begging ‘gentle Jesus’ to help her… ...let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, only to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Think of me as an impetuous Hegel, drunk with power, and also, regular drunk.
Eugene Mirman
You have to be an artist and a madman...
Vladimir Nabokov
The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying 'Know thyself.
G.I. Gurdjieff
И всегда будут короли, более или менее жестокие, бароны, более или менее дикие, и всегда будет невежественный народ, питающий восхищение к своим угнетателям и ненависть к своему освободителю. И все потому, что раб гораздо лучше понимает своего господина, пусть даже самого жестокого, чем своего освободителя, ибо каждый раб отлично представляет себя на месте господина, но мало кто представляет себя на месте бескорыстного освободителя.
Arkady Strugatsky
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.
Leo Tolstoy
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.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
Ivan Turgenev
All religions are based on obsolete terminology.
Vladimir Nabokov
The illness of a doctor is always worse than the illnesses of his patients.The patients only feel, but the doctor, as well as feeling, has a pretty good idea of the destructive effect of the disease on his constitution.This is a case in which knowledge brings death nearer.
Maxim Gorky
Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.
Vladimir Lenin
The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The square root of I is I.
Vladimir Nabokov
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.
Vladimir Lenin
Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.
Leon Trotsky
I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
Leon Trotsky
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
Vladimir Lenin
It's awful to be rich and mind-boggingly handsome and have women fawn over you. My heart bleeds for you. Poor dear, how do you manage?
Ilona Andrews
It took a qualified wizard to detect a summoning in progress. It required only a half-literate idiot with a twitch of power and a dim idea of how to use it to attempt one. Before you knew it, a three-headed Slavonic god was wreaking havoc in downtown Atlanta, the skies were raining winged snakes, and SWAT was screaming for more ammo.
Ilona Andrews
Most bullies are the product of a stressful and often abusive home life. Next time a bully threatens or attacks you, just yell, 'Don't abuse me like your parents abuse you!' Then call children's services and tell them you saw this bully crying in the bathroom and you're worried about him. Bam! He just got moved to a foster home.
Eugene Mirman
Because he has the best equipment in the City and he knows how to use it!
Ilona Andrews
What's that?""That's my attack poodle.
Ilona Andrews
Georgie, stop trying to resurrect the shoes. They were never alive in the first place.
Ilona Andrews
I ripped my left arm out of his hand and slammed my elbow into his solar plexus. He exhaled in a gasp. I lunged for the dagger and sat on top of him, my knees pinning his arms, my dagger on his throat.He lay still. “I give up,” he said and smiled. “Your move.”Er. I was sitting atop the Beast Lord in my underwear, holding a knife to his throat. What the hell was my next move?
Ilona Andrews
I came to the table, pulled up a chair, and sat. “Everyone brought a pet. I feel left out.” An enthusiastic howl broke the silence, and Grendel bounded through the doorway. He galloped through the steak house, skidded on the floor, smashed into my chair, and dropped a dead rat on my lap. Awesome.
Ilona Andrews
I've never created a riot before. I did cause a brawl at the last formal. A large number of young women there actually arrived with the expectation of seducing me into matrimony, and a couple of their mothers came to blows. It was hilari—I mean, dreadful. Simply dreadful.
Ilona Andrews