Leonid Andreyev Quotes & Sayings

Don't laugh at the voice of the stars. They are far away, their rays are light and pale, and we can barely see their sleeping shadows, but their sorcery is stern and dark. — Leonid Andreyev

Ah well, 'tis the way of the world
births and deaths, births and deaths. — Leonid Andreyev

The moon was so young, so strange, even as a young girl who is dreaming and is afraid to tell her dreams; and it was shining only for itself. — Leonid Andreyev

Death augments distance and dulls the memory. Death reconciles. — Leonid Andreyev

When a woman weeps, it is a man's shame. — Leonid Andreyev

What worse can happen to a man than to have been born? It's like asking a man who is drowning whether he is not afraid of getting wet. — Leonid Andreyev

The papers are full of murders
strange murders. It is all nonsense that there are as many brains as there are men; mankind has only one intellect, and it is beginning to get muddled. — Leonid Andreyev

I cannot get accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and explain a thing that is senseless in its basis. Millions of people gather at one place and, giving their actions order and regularity, kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy
what is it if not madness? — Leonid Andreyev

Man dies. Come from darkness, into darkness he returns, and is reabsorbed, without a trace left, into the illimitable void of time. — Leonid Andreyev

Do you not see the hand of God, which gives harmony, light, and love to the world? Do not the mountains, in the blue cloud of incense, sing their hymn of glory? — Leonid Andreyev

To succeed in life one needs two things
influence and a lucky star. — Leonid Andreyev

The only thing not worth destroying is science. That would be useless. Science is unchangeable, and if you destroyed it today, it would rise up again the same as before. — Leonid Andreyev

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

Thus will we deal with life, my little help-meet. Will we not, eh? What though it blink at us like an owl that is blinded by the sun, we will yet force it to smile. — Leonid Andreyev

All perishes, all decays, all is born again. — Leonid Andreyev

Men are always murderers, and their calmness and generosity is the calmness of a well-fed animal, that knows itself out of danger. — 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

Born, the Man assumes the name and image of humanity, and becomes in all things like unto other men who dwell upon the earth. Their hard lot becomes his, and his, in turn, becomes the lot of all who shall come after him. Drawn on inexorably by time, it is not given him to see the next rung on which his faltering foot shall fall. Bounded in knowledge, it is not given him to foretell what each succeeding hour, what each succeeding minute, shall have in store for him. In blind nescience, in an agony of foreboding, in a whirl of hopes and fears, he completes the cycle of an iron destiny. — Leonid Andreyev

Only the footsteps of the blind are short, but their thoughts are long. — Leonid Andreyev

As we educate a child
removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience
we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence
towards perfection. — Leonid Andreyev

The loss of reason in war seems to me honorable, like the death of a sentry at his post. — Leonid Andreyev

Hitherto without being; hidden away in the womb of eternity; possessed neither of thought nor feeling; remote from the range of human ken
the Man bursts, in some unknown manner, the bars of non-existence, and announces with a cry the beginning of his brief life. In the night of non-existence there bursts forth also a little candle, lit by an unseen hand. Mark well its flame: for it is the life of that Man. — Leonid Andreyev

There is no beast more cruel than man. — Leonid Andreyev

Who is all-powerful in the world? Who is most dreadful in the world? The machine. Who is most fair, most wealthy, and all-wise? The machine. What is the earth? A machine. What is the sky? A machine. What is man? A machine. A machine. — Leonid Andreyev

Only the dead know the truth. — Leonid Andreyev

See thou, whatsoever be thy name
whether Fate, Life, or Devil! I cast thee down my gauntlet, I challenge thee to battle! Men of faint heart may bow before thy mysterious power, thy face of stone may inspire them with dread, in thy unbroken silence they may discern the birth of calamity and an impending avalanche of woe. But I am daring and strong, and I challenge thee to battle! Let us draw our swords, and join our bucklers, and rain such blows upon each other's crests as shall cause the very earth to shake again! Ha! Come forth and fight with me! — Leonid Andreyev

When a man has the rope about his neck, you don't ask him about his health! — Leonid Andreyev

Wisdom and folly are equal before the face of Infinity, for Infinity knows them not. — Leonid Andreyev

Bread without love is like grass without salt
the stomach may be filled, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. — Leonid Andreyev

It's a powerful instrument, dynamite
nothing like it for a convincing argument! — Leonid Andreyev

Who strikes man with love
God or the Devil? — Leonid Andreyev