Quotes by Russian Authors - Page 11

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
Vladimir Nabokov
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.
Igor Stravinsky
Trudging on foot, loaded with sacks, bundles, and babies, young mothers who had lost their milk, driven out of their minds by the horrors of the journey, abandoned their children, shook the corn out of their sacks onto the ground, and turned back. A quick death, they had decided, was preferable to a slow death by starvation. Better to fall into the clutches of the enemy than to be torn to pieces by some beast in the forest.
Boris Pasternak
The idea of God was invented in the small hours of history by a scam who had genius; it somehow reeks too much of humanity, that idea, to make its azure origin plausible...
Vladimir Nabokov
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
Leon Trotsky
Common aim is stronger than blood.
G.I. Gurdjieff
However, do you know what? I am convinced that fellows like me who live in dark cellars must be kept under restraint. They may be able to live in their dark cellars for forty years and never open their mouths, but the moment they get into the light of day and break out they may talk and talk and talk...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.
Leo Tolstoy
Men and swords. My father said that if you put any able-bodied man, no matter how peaceful, into a room with a sword and a practice dummy and leave him alone, eventually the man would pick up the sword and try to stab the dummy. It is human nature.
Ilona Andrews
Bread for me is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.
Anton Chekhov
If a man decides that it is better for him to resist the demands of a present feeble love, in the name of another, of a future manifestation, he deceives either himself or other people, and loves no one but himself. Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.
Leo Tolstoy
He loved her with the fire of a thousand suns, she was his solace in the chaos, his redemption.
Vladimir Lenin
Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But what a rat it is!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky