Russian Literature Quotes

“But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“It's a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions - like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“He filled a shelf with a small army of books and read and read; but none of it made sense. .. They were all subject to various cramping limitations: those of the past were outdated, and those of the present were obsessed with the past.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“..depression still kept guard on him, and chased after him like a shadow - or like a faithful wife.”
― Alexander Pushkin , Eugene Onegin

“We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“For some a prologue, for some an epilogue.”
― Bulgakov Mikhail Afanas'evich

“She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word. But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don't blame!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguishes his gaze. 'I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but - alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're caught!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is comparable to pushing a beautiful grand piano up a very steep hill.”
― Kevin Ansbro

“at one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Credo che non ti amerei tanto se in te non ci fosse nulla da lamentare, nulla da rimpiangere. Io non amo la gente perfetta, quelli che non sono mai caduti, non hanno inciampato. La loro è una virtù spenta, di poco valore. A loro non si è svelata la bellezza della vita.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“One of the most brilliant Russian writers of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Zamyatin belongs to the tradition in Russian literature represented by Gogol, Leskov, Bely, Remizov, and, in certain aspects of their work, also by Babel and Bulgakov. It is a tradition, paradoxically, of experimenters and innovators. Perhaps the principal quality that unites them is their approach to reality and its uses in art - the refusal to be bound by literal fact, the interweaving of reality and fantasy, the transmutation of fact into poetry, often grotesque, oblique, playful, but always expressive of the writer's unique vision of life in his own, unique terms.”
― Mirra Ginsburg, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whether he lives or doesn't live, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.'
'So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?'
'He doesn't exist, but he does exist. In the stone there' no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“If circumstances should make it impossible (temporarily, I hope) for me to be a Russian writer, perhaps I shall be able, like the Pole Joseph Conrad, to become for a time an English writer... ("Letter To Stalin")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“...es insoportable ver solo ante si la larga hilera de comidas, mirar la vida como una ceremonia y seguir a la solemne multitud, sin compartir con ella las opiniones generales ni las pasiones.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“All the evil in man, one would think, should disappear on contact with Nature, the most spontaneous expression of beauty and goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych & Other Stories

“There was much that was endearing in this strangely Russian search for absolutes —such as the passion for big ideas that gave the literature of nineteenth-century Russia its unique character and power—and yet the underside of this idealism was a badgering didacticism, a moral dogmatism and intolerance, which in its own way was just as harmful as the censorship it opposed.”
― Orlando Figes

“Несовпадение душ неизменное
порождает вопросы пустые,
суету дополняя душевную
объясненьями непростыми...”
― Ekaterina Yakovina, Prikosnovenie Vechnosti

“مردم دانا از قدیم الایام گفته اند که خوشبختی مانند سلامتی است: وقتی نزد کسی هست، هیچ جلب توجه نمی کند، ولی هنگامی که سال ها می گذرند و می روند، آن وقت است که یاد خوشبختی در سرت زنده می شود. چه جور هم زنده می شود!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook & The Fatal Eggs (Hardcover)

“قدرت او در این حقیقت نهفته است که سعی نمی کند تمام دردهای اجتماعی را ا یک ضربه درمان کند. ما مردم روسیه واقعا مردمان عجیبی هستیم! ما راحت می نشینیم و منتظر می شویم چیزی یا کسی بیاید و بلافاصله ما را شفا بدهد، تمام زخم های ما را التیام بخشد، تمام امراض ما را مثل یک دندان فاسد ریشه کن کند. ولی چه کسی یا چیزی باید این طلسم سحرآمیز را بشکند، داروینیسم، روستا، اسقف پری پنتی یف، یک جنگ خارجی، ما نمی دانیم و توجه نداریم، ولی باید دندانمان را بیرون بکشیم! این چیزی نیست مگر فقط تنبلی، بطالت و بی فکری. از طرف دیگر سالومین با سایرین فرق دارد. او داوطلب کشیدن دندان ها نمی شود. می داند که چه کار می کند!.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Virgin Soil

“... достаточно увидеть мужчину и женщину наедине, чтобы понять: кто из двоих любит сильнее или кто из двоих вообще любит. Тот, кто любит, всегда участливо склоняется над тем, кто лежит, заложив руки за голову.”
― Юрий Поляков, Замыслил я побег

“He was reading the Russians with that certain heavy tone people put in their voices when they say, "I'm reading the Russians.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Abismarse en la confesión es la esencia del alma rusa.”
― Guillermo Saccomanno, El oficinista

“Oh, let everything pass and be forgotten—and again in two hundred years’ time an ambitious failure will vent his frustration on the simpletons dreaming of a good life (that is if there does not come my kingdom, where everyone keeps to himself and there is no equality and no authorities—but if you don’t want it, I don’t insist and don’t care).”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“She stood, holding the railing, white as a sheet, with eyes wide open and that uncomprehending, almost ecstatic expression you encounter on the faces of martyrs.”
― Sofia Kovalevskaya, Nihilist Girl

“تمام زندگی من در این جا سپری شده است، در کتابخانه، وسط کتاب ها. هر چیزی که می دانم کتاب ها به من داده اند، کتاب هایی این قدر متنوع و این قدر زنده... در هر کدامشان قلب فناناپذیر خالقی می تپد؛ گیریم گاهی این قلب ابله است، گیریم گاهی حتی سیاه و بدذات است، اما دقیقا همین ها هستند که شخصیت مرا شکل داده اند.”
― Andrei Volos, رمانی با یک طوطی

“I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor,' the elder remarked. 'He was then an old man, and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. "I love mankind," he said, "but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams," he said, "I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days; this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me," he said. "On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole."''But what is to be done, then?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Brothers Karamazov

“...Or was his destiny from the start
To be but just one moment
Near your heart?...”
― Ivan Turgenev