Maxim Gorky Quotes & Sayings

All that is called Destiny or Fate is none other than the result of our thoughtlessness and our mistrust of ourselves; we should know that all that is created on earth is created by its sole Master and Laborer
Man. — Maxim Gorky

What I'd like is to meet a man I could take off my hat to and say: Thank you for having got born, and the longer you live the better. — Maxim Gorky

For sadness and gladness live within us side by side, almost inseparable; the one succeeding the other with an elusive, unappreciable swiftness. — Maxim Gorky

Jail doesn't teach anyone to do good, nor Siberia, but a man-yes! A man can teach another man to do good-believe me! — Maxim Gorky

Hunger can explain many acts. It can be said that all vile acts are done to satisfy hunger. — Maxim Gorky

When one loves somebody everything is clear - where to go, what to do - it all takes care of itself and one doesn't have to ask anybody about anything. — Maxim Gorky

An honest man is all right even if he's an idiot ... but a crook must have brains. — Maxim Gorky

Once there was a crow, it flew from the field to the hill, from hedge to hedge, and lived its life. then it died and rotted away. -what's the sense in it? there just ISN'T any! — Maxim Gorky

Only mothers can think of the future - because they give birth to it in their children. — Maxim Gorky

To an old man any place that's warm is homeland. — Maxim Gorky

Here I've been living along, year after year, forty of them behind me, with a wife and children, and not a soul in the world to talk to. Come moments when I think I just have to pour out my soul to somebody, to say all there is to say, and - no one to say it to! If you tell it to her - the wife, that is - it don't reach her. What's it to her? She's got her children, the house, her cares. She's outside my soul. Your wife's your friend till the first baby comes ... that's how it is. And in general, my wife - well, you can see for yourself - no fun with her - just a lump of flesh, damn it all! Ah, brother, what a heartache! — Maxim Gorky

To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him. — Maxim Gorky

Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong. — Maxim Gorky

The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment. — Maxim Gorky

Like some wondrous birds out of fairy tales, books sang their songs to me and spoke to me as though communing with one languishing in prison; they sang of the variety and richness of life, of man's audacity in his strivings towards goodness and beauty. — Maxim Gorky

The higher goal a person pursues, the quicker his ability develops, and the more beneficial he will become to the society. I believe for sure that this is also a truth. — Maxim Gorky

In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere. — Maxim Gorky

in music one can hear everything. — Maxim Gorky

We must endure, Alyosha. That was the only thing she could say in response to my accounts of the ugliness and dreariness of life, of the suffering of the people - of everything against which I protested so vehemently. I was not made for endurance, and if occasionally I exhibited this virtue of cattle, wood, and stone, I did so only to test myself, to try my strength and my stability. Sometimes young people, in the foolishness of immaturity, or in envy of the strength of their elders, strive, even successfully, to lift weights that overtax their bones and muscles; in their vanity they attempt to cross themselves with two-pood weights, like mature athletes. I too did this, in the literal and figurative sense, physically and spiritually, and only good fortune kept me from injuring myself fatally or crippling myself for life.
For nothing cripples a person so dreadfully as endurance, as a humble submission to the forces of circumstance. — Maxim Gorky

The poor people are stupid from poverty, and the rich from greed. — Maxim Gorky

The more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round in rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do not understand this. — Maxim Gorky

All of us are pilgrims on this earth. I have even heard it said that the earth itself is a pilgrim in the heavens. — Maxim Gorky

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. — Maxim Gorky

Truth doesn't always heal a wounded soul. — Maxim Gorky

The mother again remarked the simplicity and calmness of their relation to each other. it was hard for her to get used to it. no kissing, no affictionate words passed between them but they behaved so sincerely, so amicably and so solicitously toward each other. in the life she had been accustomed to, people kissed a great deal and uttered many sentimental words, but always bit at one another like hungry dogs. — Maxim Gorky

The number of books increased on the shelves neatly made for him by one of his carpenter friends. The room began to look like a home. — Maxim Gorky

All human beings have gray little souls-and they all want to rouge them up. — Maxim Gorky

A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains. — Maxim Gorky

All parents wash away their sins with their tears; you are not the only one. — Maxim Gorky

Anger is like ice, and also quick to melt — Maxim Gorky

What can you do by killing? Nothing. You kill one dog, the master buys another-that's all there is to it. — Maxim Gorky

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere. — Maxim Gorky

Even a bad man is better than a good book. — Maxim Gorky

The illness of a doctor is always worse than the illnesses of his patients.The patients only feel, but the doctor, as well as feeling, has a pretty good idea of the destructive effect of the disease on his constitution.This is a case in which knowledge brings death nearer. — Maxim Gorky

In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible
such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets? — Maxim Gorky

But silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say
to them silence is simple and easy ... — Maxim Gorky

We people at the bottom feel everything; but it is hard for us to speak out our hearts. our thoughts float about in us. we are ashamed because, although we understand, we are not able to express them; an often from shame we are angry at our thoughts, and at those who inspire them. we drive them away from ourselves — Maxim Gorky

What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians. — Maxim Gorky

This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time! — Maxim Gorky

Man made another imperceptible step toward his grave; but he saw close before him the delights of rest, the joys of the odorous tavern, and he was satisfied. — Maxim Gorky

An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form. — Maxim Gorky

One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty. — Maxim Gorky

It is quiet here and restful and the air is delicious. There are gardens everywhere and police spies lie in the bushes. There are nightingales in every garden, but police spies only in mine, I think. They sit under my windows in the darkness of the night and try to get a glimpse of how I spread sedition in Russia. — Maxim Gorky

Our most merciless enemy is our past. — Maxim Gorky

Jazz may be a thrilling communion with the primitive soul; or it may be an ear-splitting bore. — Maxim Gorky

And he's direct, clear, firm, like truth itself. — Maxim Gorky

In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which various simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same. — Maxim Gorky

We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it. — Maxim Gorky

If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture. — Maxim Gorky

Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future — Maxim Gorky

They destroy lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master - I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov - my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my life-blood, my very life. That's for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my blood. He bought her a gold wash basin with my blood. — Maxim Gorky

Politics is the soil in which the nettle of poisonous enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, slander, morbid ambitions, and disrespect for the individual grows rapidly and luxuriantly. Name anything bad in man and it is precisely in the soil of political struggle that it grows with particular liveliness and abundance. — Maxim Gorky

When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid. — Maxim Gorky

You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better. — Maxim Gorky

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man - Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do? — Maxim Gorky

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. When work is a duty, life is slavery! — Maxim Gorky

Every new time will give its law. — Maxim Gorky

Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man. — Maxim Gorky

I did not speak," continued Pavel, "about that good and gracious God in whom you believe, but about the God with whom the priests threaten us as with a stick, about the God in whose name they want to force all of us to the evil will of the few. — Maxim Gorky

We ever long for visions of beauty,
We ever dream of unknown worlds. — Maxim Gorky

The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism. — Maxim Gorky

The pleasure of living carries with it the obligation to die. — Maxim Gorky

In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday, and a fire is an entertainment. A scratch embellishes an empty face. — Maxim Gorky

Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent. — Maxim Gorky

When they tear a workingman's hand in a machine or kill him, you can understand
the workingman himself is at fault. But in a case like this, when they suck a man's blood out of him and throw him away like a carcass
that can't be explained in any way. I can comprehend every murder; but torturing for mere sport I can't comprehend. And why do they torture the people? To what purpose do they torture us all? For fun, for mere amusement, so that they can live pleasantly on the earth; so that they can buy everything with the blood of the people, a prima donna, horses, silver knives, golden dishes, expensive toys for their children. YOU work, work, work, work more and more, and I'LL hoard money by your labor and give my mistress a golden wash basin — Maxim Gorky

One word of praise from a woman is dearer to me than a whole ode from a man . — Maxim Gorky

You will not drown the truth in seas of blood — Maxim Gorky

Everywhere, within man and without, there is devastation, instability, chaos, and evidence of some prolonged rout. — Maxim Gorky

Yes, the rich. And that's their misfortune. You see, if you keep adding copper bit by bit to a child's food, you prevent the growth of its bones, and he'll be a dwarf; and if from his youth up you poison a man with gold, you deaden his soul. Once, — Maxim Gorky

A man must preserve himself for his work and must be thoroughly acquainted with the road to it. A man, dear, is like the pilot on a ship. In youth, as at high tide, go straight! A way is open to you everywhere. But you must know when it is time to steer. The waters recede - here you see a sandbank, there, a rock; it is necessary to know all this and to slip off in time, in order to reach the harbour safe and sound. — Maxim Gorky

Our salvation is in work, but let us also take delight in that work. — Maxim Gorky

The Englishman walks before the law like a trained horse in the circus. He has the sense of legality in his bones, in his muscles. — Maxim Gorky

Meeting one another they spoke about the factory and the machines, had their fling against their foreman, conversed and thought only of matters closely and manifestly connected with their work. Only rarely, and then but faintly, did solitary sparks of impotent thought glimmer in the wearisome monotony of their talk. — Maxim Gorky

Family life always diminishes the energy of a revolutionist. Children must be maintained in security ,and there's the need to work a great deal for one's break. The revolutionist ought without cease to develop every iota of his energy; he must deepen and broaden it; but this demands time. He must always be at the head, because we--the workingmen--are called by the logic of history to destroy the old world, to create the new life; and if we stop, if we yield to exhaustion, or are attracted by the possibility of a little immediate conquest, it's bad--it's almost treachery to the cause. No revolutionist can adhere closely to an individual--walk thorough life side by side with another individual--without distorting his faith; and we must never forget that our aim is not little conquests, but only complete victory! — Maxim Gorky

Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man? — Maxim Gorky

The doleful, ugly sounds became entangled in his whiskers. — Maxim Gorky

This society of 'creatures that once were men' had one fine characteristic - no one of them endeavored to make out that he was better than the others, nor compelled the others to acknowledge his superiority. — Maxim Gorky

God created man in his own image and after his own likeness. Therefore he is like man if man is like him. — Maxim Gorky

Talent I say is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one's own powers. — Maxim Gorky

It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes. — Maxim Gorky

Let us not search for the guilty ones only among others, let us speak the bitter truth: we are all guilty ... each and every one of us. — Maxim Gorky

You must write for children in the same way as you do for adults, only better. — Maxim Gorky

The indifferent pendulum of the clock kept chopping off the seconds of life, calmly and precisely. — Maxim Gorky

There is no one on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there is no one so miserable as he who accepts them. — Maxim Gorky

Two forces are succesfully influencing the education of a cultivated man: art and science. Both are united in the book. — Maxim Gorky

However low he may fall, a man can never deny himself the delight of feeling cleverer, more powerful or even better fed than his companions. — Maxim Gorky

Those - " - here he flung out a terrible oath - "those people don't know what their blind hands are sowing. They will know when our power is complete and we begin to mow down their cursed grass. They'll know it then! — Maxim Gorky

There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence. — Maxim Gorky

Keep reading books, but remember that a book's only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself. — Maxim Gorky

But I'm not to be caught with such poor bait! I'm a big fish, I am. — Maxim Gorky

I've thought all my life, 'Lord Christ in heaven! what did I live for?' Beatings, work! I saw nothing except my husband. I knew nothing but fear! And how Pasha grew I did not see, and I hardly know whether I loved him when my husband was alive. All my concerns, all my thoughts were centered upon one thing - to feed my beast, to propitiate the master of my life with enough food, pleasing to his palate, and served on time, so as not to incur his displeasure, so as to escape the terrors of a beating, to get him to spare me but once! But I do not remember that he ever did spare me. He beat me so - not as a wife is beaten, but as one whom you hate and detest. — Maxim Gorky

Everything which is good in me should be credited to books. — Maxim Gorky

Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public. — Maxim Gorky

Much later I realized that Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow--to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy. — Maxim Gorky

God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism. — Maxim Gorky

When the life is monotonous , even grief is a welcome event ... — Maxim Gorky

Our existence has always and everywhere been tragic, but man has converted these numberless tragedies into works of art. I know of nothing more astonishing or more wonderful than this transformation. — Maxim Gorky

[Politics] is the seedbed of social enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, morbid ambitions, and disrespect for the individual. Name anything bad in man, and it is precisely in the soil of political struggle that it grows with abundance. — Maxim Gorky

Intellectual force is qualitatively the first and foremost productive force, and concern for its rapid growth should be the ardent concern of all classes. — Maxim Gorky

Many contemporary authors drink more than they write. — Maxim Gorky