Leonid Andreyev > Quotes

“I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man’s reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me and…to kill themselves.”
― Leonid Andreyev

“Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out.”
― Leonid Andreyev

“Look at us, Lazarus, and share our joy. Is there anything stronger than love?"

And Lazarus looked. And for the rest of their life they kept on loving each other, but their passion grew gloomy and joyless, like those funeral cypresses whose roots feed on the decay of the graves and whose black summits in a still evening hour seek in vain to reach the sky. Thrown by the unknown forces of life into each other's embraces, they mingled tears with kisses, voluptuous pleasures with pain, and they felt themselves doubly slaves, obedient slaves to life, and patient servants of the silent Nothingness. Ever united, ever severed, they blazed like sparks and like sparks lost themselves in the boundless Dark.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Lazarus

“You love humanity and I detest it. At best I am indifferent to it. Let it live and not interfere with me.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Judas Iskarijotas. Šėtono dienoraštis

“Yes, I do read books but only for one purpose: to learn how to hate man and to hold him in contempt.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Judas Iskarijotas. Šėtono dienoraštis

“He felt that in the eyes of the Infinite wisdom and folly are the same, for the Infinite knows them not.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Lazarus

“No more did the frozen heart ache.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Lazarus

“I play because my loneliness is very great, very deep- I fear it has no bottom at all! I stand on the edge of an abyss and hurl words, many heavy words, into it, but they fall without a sound. I hurl into it laughter, threats and moans. I spit into it. I fling into it heaps of stones and rocks. I throw mountains into it- ant still it remains silent and empty.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Judas Iskarijotas. Šėtono dienoraštis

“I do not want to lie so rudely and ungracefully. I will lie to you elsewhere, when you least expect it, and that will be far more interesting for both of us.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary

“My loneliness is very great. I am not in need of friends, but I must speak of Myself and I have no one to speak to.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Judas Iskarijotas. Šėtono dienoraštis

“He did not dissociate his thought from himself; he thought integrally, with the whole of his body; and each logical deduction forthwith became real to him—as happens only with very healthy or direct persons who have not yet turned thought into a pastime.”
― Leonid Andreyev

“Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“I do not like Christians. They shake the tree of life, forbidding it to bear fruit, and they scatter to the wind it's fragrant blossoms.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Lazarus

“Мое одиночество очень велико. Я не нуждаюсь в друзьях, но Мне надо говорить о себе, и Мне не с кем говорить. Одних мыслей недостаточно, и они не вполне ясны, отчетливы и точны, пока Я не выражу их словом: их надо выстроить в ряд, как солдат или телеграфные столбы, протянуть, как железнодорожный путь, перебросить мосты и виадуки, построить насыпи и закругления, сделать в известных местах остановки - и лишь тогда все становится ясно. Этот каторжный инженерный путь называется у них, кажется, логикой и последовательностью и обязателен для тех, кто хочет быть умным; для всех остальных он не обязателен, и они могут блуждать, как им угодно.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary

“It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw Life, on the other side—Death,—like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“Sanki beynimin üstündeki kemik kapağı kaldırmışlar ve savunmasız, çırılçıplak kalan beyin boyun eğerek kana kana içine çekiyor bu kanlı ve çılgın günlerin tüm dehşetini. Tortop büzülmüş yatıyorum, tüm bedenim hepi topu iki arşınlık alan kaplarken düşüncem dünyayı kucaklıyor. Tüm insanların gözleriyle görüyor, kulaklarıyla duyuyorum; ölenlerle ölüyorum; yaralananlar ve unutulanlarla kederlenip ağlıyorum ve bir bedenden kan fışkırdığında yaraların acısını hissediyor, ıstırap çekiyorum. Olmayanı ve uzaktakini, tıpkı olan ve yakındaki kadar net görüyorum, çırılçıplak kalan beynimin ıstırabının bir sınırı yok.”
― Leonid Andreyev, The Red Laugh

“Rome fell silently to ruins. A New city rose in its place, and it was too erased by emptiness. Like phantom Giants, cities, kingdoms, and countries swiftly fell and disappeared into emptiness-- swallowed up in the black maw of the Infinite”
― Leonid Andreyev, Lazarus

“What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“Co by to bylo za velkého lháře, který by dokázal oklamat jen ostatní? Lhát se musí tak, aby tomu člověk sám uvěřil - to je umění!”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary

“under the most painful conditions, where it would seem that there remains no room for hope or life—a human being, a being of the highest order, possessing a mind and a will, finds both hope and life.”
― Leonid Andreyev, The Leonid Andreyev Collection

“But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“But the rope is still more horrible when it forms the noose around the necks of weak and ignorant people.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Lazarus

“Jen si představ: ze tří dětí, které přivedeš na svět, se jedno stane vrahem, druhé obětí a třetí soudcem a katem. Lidé každý den zabíjejí vrahy, ale neustále se rodí další a další; každý den v sobě vrazi zabíjejí svědomí, zatímco svědomí popravuje vrahy, a všichni jsou naživu: jak vrazi, tak svědomí. V jaké mlze to žijeme!”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary

“Мудрость слов нужна нищим духом, богатые же - безмолвны.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary

“El amor ansía ser correspondido; buscan las lágrimas lágrimas que les respondan. Y cuando el alma de un gran pueblo sufre, su vida entera acusa el dolor; tiembla toda alma viva y los de corazón puro van al sacrificio”
― Leonid Andreyev, Sascha Yegulev. La Historia de Un Asesino

“And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“Bu tarihte akılsızlık ve kan, zorbalık ve yalan görüyorum, sürekli çiğnedikleri yeminlerini duyuyor, Tanrı'ya dua ederken ağızlarından çıkan her insaf ve merhamet yakarışında, üzerlerine bastıkları toprağı nasıl aşağıladıklarını dinliyorum.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary

“Lidské šílenství je velmi nakažlivé.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Satan's Diary