This book contains words of wisdom by a prominent philologist and historian of Russian literature, one of the most authoritative figures in modern Russian culture, a member of the Russian "Pen club", academician Dmitrii Likhachev (1906-1999). It is a collection of his thoughts on the subjects of national heritage, knowledge, morality, and the new and the old.
Russian medievalist, linguist, and concentration camp survivor. During his lifetime, Likhachov was considered the world's foremost scholar of the Old East Slavic language and its literature.