Physicians From Russia

"Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?"

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

"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.""

"Between "there is a God" and "there is no God" lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little. (Diary, 1897)"

"Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost. (Diary, 9 February 1897)"

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

"The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness; if it issues not from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing."

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

"Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; political and literary hypocrites pretend to be eagles. But don't be disconcerted by their aquiline appearance. They are not eagles, but rats or dogs."

"It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person."

"Love is a great thing. It is not by chance that in all times and practically among all cultured peoples love in the general sense and the love of a man for his wife are both called love. If love is often cruel or destructive, the reason lies not in love itself, but in the inequality between people."

"A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog."

"If only one tooth aches, rejoice that not all of them ache.... If your wife betrays you, be glad that she betrayed only you and not the nation."

"Eyes—the head’s chief of police. They watch and make mental notes. A blind person is like a city abandoned by the authorities. On sad days they cry. In these carefree times they weep only from tender emotions."

"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."

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

"While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave."

"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."

"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."

"A fiancé is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other."

"All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still."

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

"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."

"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."

"When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean—that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses—that is science."

"How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything."

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

"[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh."

"Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher’s stone."

"If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him."

"We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past.""

"Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is."

"There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human."

"And I thought that were we now to obtain political liberty, of which we talk so much, while engaged in biting one another, we should not know what to do with it, we should waste it in accusing one another in the newspapers of being spies and money-grubbers, we should frighten society with the assurance that we have neither men, nor science, nor literature, nothing! Nothing!"

"It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution."

"There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday."

"My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life."

"Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? In front of God or, perhaps, in front of the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not in front of people. Among people, one must be conscious of one’s dignity."

"A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings."

"In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust. <…> You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will… Each hour is precious."

"Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all."

"Hoping for the critics' indulgence, the author asks to send money for his story immediately, otherwise his wife and kids will die of hunger."

"When in a serious mood, it seems to me that those people are illogical who feel an aversion toward death. As far as I can see, life consists exclusively of horrors, unpleasantnesses and banalities, now merging, now alternating."

"To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards."

"There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon."

"Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience."

"Oh, what women are here!"

"Tell me, pleez, my sawl, when will I live in human way, that is, to work and not to be in need? Now I work, and I'm in need, and I spoil my reputation by the need to write bullshit."

"Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf."