Mikhailovsky Quotes & Sayings

Free from ivory-tower
the pencil twirls
across the footpath — Santosh Kalwar

He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. — Richard Hamming

Whether I am believed or not, I will repeat that Vladimir Soloviov, who held that Dostoevsky was a prophet, is wrong, and that N. K. Mikhailovsky, who calls him a cruel talent and a grubber after buried treasure, is right. Dostoevsky grubs after buried treasure no doubt about that. And, therefore, it would be more becoming in the younger generation that still marches under the flag of pious idealism if, instead of choosing him as a spiritual leader, they avoided the old sorcerer, in whom only those gifted with great shortsightedness or lack of experience in life could fail to see the dangerous man. — Lev Shestov

All I could think was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of. So as I felt his fingers loosening around my wrist, I just wrapped my own around them, tight, and held on — Sarah Dessen

Suffering is a kind of ecstasy in a way. Having pain all the time makes me terribly, terribly grateful for every moment I've got. — John Tavener

People were always ready to yield their
wills, to worship the hero, because they were not given a chance
for developing initiative, stability, and independence, said the great
nineteenth-century Russian sociologist Nikolai Mikhailovsky — Ernest Becker

Happily-ever-after monogamy has been reinforced so steadily in literature that we tend to feel like failures when we don't achieve that in reality. — Colleen Chen

One thing I've learned after being a middle-school director for twenty years: there are almost always more than two sides to every story. Although I don't know the details, I have an inkling about what may have sparked the confrontation with Julian. While nothing justifies striking another student - ever - I also know good friends are sometimes worth defending. — R.J. Palacio

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them. — George Saunders

He grappled with anxiety until the early hours, trying to work out the best way to tell her who he really was. But every time he played it out in his head, she always ran off screaming. How could he ask anyone to deal with this? It was his burden and his curse, and he was so afraid it would hurt her. But he was too far in, now, he loved her too much just to walk away. What was he going to do? — Lindsay Woodward

It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle against, the people. Beggars — Victor Hugo

I felt like I played in a very rough football game with no hitting above the waist. — Alan Page