Short Story Writers From Russia

"Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck."

"Everyone has the same God; only people differ."

"It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest."

"Несчастные эгоистичны, злы, несправедливы, жестоки и менее, чем глупцы, способны понимать друг друга. Не соединяет, а разъединяет людей несчастье..."

"Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased."

"I walked by an old white house of two storeys with a terrace, and there suddenly opened before me a view of a courtyard, a large pond with a bathing-house, a group of green willows, and a village on the further bank, with a high, narrow belfry on which there glittered a cross reflecting the setting sun. For a moment it breathed upon me the fascination of something near and very familiar, as though I had seen that landscape at some time in my childhood."

"Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie."

"Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal."

"Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs."

"When the green garden, still wet with dew, is all sparkling in the sun and looks radiant with happiness, when there is a scent of mignonette and oleander near the house, when the young people have just come back from church and are having breakfast in the garden, all so charmingly dressed and gay, and one knows that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome people are going to do nothing the whole long day, one wishes that all life were like that."

"One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven."

"If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work."

"You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!"

"Yes, that's how it is, child. He who works, he who is patient is the superior."

"Lermontov died at age twenty-eight and wrote more than have you and I put together. Talent is recognizable not only by quality, but also by the quantity it yields."

"To regard one’s immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth."

"There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent."

"Who keeps the tavern and serves up the drinks? The peasant. Who squanders and drinks up money belonging to the peasant commune, the school, the church? The peasant. Who would steal from his neighbor, commit arson, and falsely denounce another for a bottle of vodka? The peasant."

"Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape."

"There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality."

"It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday."

"Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice."

"Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous."

"By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress."

"Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it."

"The cherry orchard is now mine!... I bought the estate on which my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even permitted in the kitchen."

"Good breeding doesn't mean that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice when someone else does."

"Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another."

"It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others’ expense."

"I think the first discovery I made for myself which I didn't necessarily share with my family or my friends, but came upon myself, was Russian literature. I've always felt very much enthralled to writers like Dostoevsky, especially, and Chekhov."

"I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities."

"People who live alone always have something on their minds that they would willingly share."

"There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail."

"Solomon made a great mistake when he asked for wisdom."

"It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don’t just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness."

"If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity."

"Nature’s law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man."

"Anton Chekhov was very important to me at one time, because I saw in my earlier years the passing of my aristocratic way of life in Calcutta with the coming in of the Communist Government, as being reflected in Chekhov's literary presentation of a decadent Russian society."

"But she was incapable of really loving as I did, for she was cold and already somewhat corrupted. There was a demon in her, whispering to her day and night that she was enchanting, adorable; and, having no definite idea for what object she was created, or for what purpose life had been given her, she never pictured herself in the future except as very wealthy and distinguished ... of a perfect swarm of counts, princes, ambassadors, celebrated painters and artists, all of them adoring her and in ecstasies over her beauty and her dresses. . . ."

"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.""

"Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms."

"Read Chekhov, read the stories straight through. Admit that you understand nothing of life, nothing of what you see. Then go out and look at the world."

"Every day we spent in enjoying ourselves and in nothing but enjoying ourselves; we strolled in the park, we ate, we drank. Every day there were conversations..."

"Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life."

"Look here, my good girl . . . sit down and listen. We must part! The fact is, I don't want to live with you any longer." ... She said nothing in answer to the student's words, only her lips began to tremble. "You know we should have to part sooner or later, anyway," . . "You're a nice, good girl, and not a fool . . ." Anyuta put on her coat again, in silence wrapped up her embroidery in paper ... "Why are you crying?" asked Klotchkov. . . . "You are a strange girl, really. . . . Why, you know we shall have to part. We can't stay together for ever." She had gathered together all her belongings, and turned to say good-bye to him, and he felt sorry for her. "Shall I let her stay on here another week?" he thought. "She really may as well stay, and I'll tell her to go in a week;" and vexed at his own weakness, he shouted to her roughly: "Come, why are you standing there? If you are going, go; and if you don't want to, take off your coat and stay! You can stay!"

"Pasternak has universal meaning, for he embodies the fight the artist and the seeker after truth must wage everywhere against official dogma and conformist pressures."

"All of us who are more or less heretical in our society are forced to live on its margin, grateful that we are able to speak (at the cost of abnormal exertions) to a small audience."

"Am I a gangster or a murderer? Of what crime do I stand Condemned? I made the whole world weep At the beauty of my land."

"Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light."

"Like a beast in a pen, I’m cut off From my friends, freedom, the Sun. But the hunters are gaining ground; I’ve nowhere else to run."