M 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

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

Everything seems simple and near. Then, all of a sudden, I cannot understand this simplicity. Again, I'm calm. In a second I grow fearful, because I am calm. I always used to be afraid, my whole life long; but now that there's a great deal to be afraid of, I have very little fear. Why is it? I cannot understand. — Maxim Gorky

If Picasso drips, I drip ... For a long while I was with Cezanne, and now I am with Picasso. — Arshile 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

And this was the end of my first friendship with one of that innumerable company of people who are foreigners in their own country, but who are in reality its finest sons ... — Maxim Gorky

The intelligentsia ... was kept busy embroidering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments of the bourgeoisie - that old and filthy fabric besmeared with the blood of toiling masses. — 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

Was it Gorky who said: If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered in vain, indeed you have lived in vain. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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

I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to - because I like to change my mind so often. The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting. — Arshile Gorky

When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid. — 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

If a painting of mine suits me, it is right. If it does not please me, I care not if all the great masters should approve it or the dealers buy it. They would be wrong. — Arshile 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

Every new time will give its law. — 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

You know how fussy and particular I am in painting. I am ever removing the paint and repainting the spot until I am completely exhausted. — Arshile 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

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

Dreams form the bristles of the artist's brush. — Arshile 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

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

Drawing is the basis of art. A bad painter cannot draw. But one who draws well can always paint. — Arshile 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

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

That doesn't matter. Gorky's a vain man. We must bind him with cables to the Party," replied Stalin.3 It worked: during the kulak liquidation, Gorky unleashed his hatred of the backward peasants in Pravda: "If the enemy does not surrender, he must be exterminated." He toured concentration camps and admired their re-educational value. He supported slave labour projects such as the Belomor Canal which he visited with Yagoda, whom he congratulated: "You rough fellows do not realize what great work you're doing!"4 Yagoda, — Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

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

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