Varlam Quotes & Sayings

Death is the last fact of which we can be certain. — Geraldine Jewsbury

Life repeats Shakespearian themes more often than we think. Did Lady Macbeth, Richard III, and King Claudius exist only in the Middle Ages? Shylock wanted to cut a pound of flesh from the body of the merchant of Venice. Is that a fairy tale? — Varlam Shalamov

People in Japan and the Faeroe Islands kill dolphins and pilot whales by running steel rods into their spinal columns while they squeal in pain and terror and thrash in agony. (In Japan, it's illegal to kill cows and pigs as painfully and inhumanely as they kill dolphins.) The lack of compassion for dolphins and whales indicates that humans' "theory of mind" is incomplete. We have an empathy shortfall, a compassion deficit. And human-on-human violence, abuse, and ethnic and religious genocide are all too pervasive in our world. No elephant will ever pilot a jetliner. And no elephant will ever pilot a jetliner into the World Trade Center. We have the capacity for wider compassion, but we don't fully live up to ourselves. Why do human egos seem so threatened by the thought that other animals think and feel? Is it because acknowledging the mind of another makes it harder to abuse them? We seem so unfinished and so defensive. Maybe incompleteness is one of the things that "makes us human. — Carl Safina

There is a much that a man should not see, should not know, and if he should see it, it is better for him to die. — Varlam Shalamov

Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friend. — Varlam Shalamov

If bones could freeze, then the brain could also be dulled and the soul could freeze over. And the soul shuddered and froze- perhaps to remain frozen forever. — Varlam Shalamov

As children we recognized that we belonged to an unusual, even exceptional, family, but the effect was different on each of us. — David Rockefeller

A human being survives by his ability to forget. Memory is always ready to blot out the bad and retain only the good. — Varlam Shalamov

There's no way I can justify my salary level, but I'm learning to live with it. — Drew Carey

Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they used the flawed intelligence to mislead. — David Corn

Bahrainis are better off than many other Arabs. We have a welfare state, everybody gets a salary whether they have a job or not. Electricity and food are subsidized; school and healthcare are free. And we don't differentiate between Bahrainis and foreigners. We are very proud of that. — Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

I remember the old northern legend of how God created the taiga while he was still a child. There were few colors, but they were childishly fresh and vivid, and their subjects were simple. Later, when God grew up and became an adult, he learned to cut out complicated patters from his pages and created many bright birds. God grew bored with his former child's world and he threw snow on his forest creation and went south forever. — Varlam Shalamov

We realized that life, even the worst of life, consists of an alternation of joys and sorrow, successes and failure more than the successes. — Varlam Shalamov

Your universe is not out there. You create it every moment and every day with your thoughts, ideas, perceptions, and imaginations. — Debasish Mridha

I like taking risks and I decided to put every bit of me into the role. — Sherilyn Fenn

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise ... Let him take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dance, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself. — Samuel Johnson