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Vasily Quotes & Sayings

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Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Each wave breaking against the cliff would believe it was dying for the good of the sea; it would never occur to it that, like thousands of waves before and after, it had only been brought into being by the wind. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

I don't believe in your "Good". I believe in human kindness. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Everyone feels guilty before a mother who has lost her son in a war; throughout human history men have tried in vain to justify themselves. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Rozanov

We mean to say that Symbolism and Decadence - the negative attitude to which is indisputable to everyone except the "participants" - are genetically connected with everything brilliant and sublime created by the "unbound personality" during this period of time, from the Renaissance up to the development of electrical engineering; contrariwise, the border which they cannot cross is laid down where man understood that he was always "bound." The great continent of history, the continent of real deeds, practical needs, and more than all that, of received religion and the established Church - that is whose shore this stinking monster can never crawl into, that is where we are fleeing to from it, that is where man can always save himself. Where the monastery wall rises this surge of the faithless waves of history - no matter how strong it may become and how far it may spread around - will stop and fall back.

("On Symbolists & Decadence") — Vasily Rozanov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

We should call on the Creator to show more modesty. He created the world in a frenzy of excitement. Instead of revising his rough drafts, he had his work printed straightaway. What a lot of contradictions there are in it. What a log of typing errors, inconsistencies in the plot, passages that are too long and wordy, characters that are entirely superfluous. But it is painful and difficult to cut and trim the living cloth of a book written and published in too much of a hurry — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Freedom is the right to sow what you want. It's the right to make boots or shoes, it's the right to bake bread from the grain you've sown and to sell it or not sell it as you choose. It's the same whether you're a locksmith or a steelworker or an artist - freedom is the right to live and work as you wish and not as you're ordered to. But there's no freedom for anyone - whether you write books, whether you sow grain, or whether you make boots." That night Ivan Grigoryevich lay — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

It was then that he started his novel The People Immortal, and when I read it later, many of its pages seemed to me very familiar. He found himself as a writer during the war. His pre-war books were nothing more than searching for his theme and language. He was a true internationalist and reproached me frequently for saying "Germans" instead of "Hitler's men" when describing the atrocities of the occupiers.' Ehrenburg was persuaded that it was Grossman's all-embracing world view which made the xenophobic Stalin hate him. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

He had never killed a child; he had never arrested anyone. But he had broken the fragile dyke that protected the purity of his soul from the seething darkness around him. The blood of the camps and the ghettos had gushed over him and carried him away ... There was no longer any divide between him and the darkness; he himself was part of the darkness. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Chuikov

Every German soldier must be made to feel that he is living under the muzzle of a Russian gun. — Vasily Chuikov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The true champions of a nation's freedom are those who reject the limitations of stereotypes and affirm the rich diversity of human nature to be found. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

In my opinion, the style of a player should not be formed under the influence of any single great master. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

What constitutes the character of a nation is the character of many individual human beings; every national character is in essence, simply human nature. All the worlds nations, therefore, have a great deal in common with one another. The foundation of any national character is human nature. The foundation of national character is simply a particular colouring taken on by human nature, a particular crystallisation of it. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Byerozkin knew very well that the man with no quiet at the bottom of his soul was unable to endure for long, however courageous he might be in combat. He thought of fear or cowardice, on the other hand, as something temporary, something that could be cured as easily as a cold. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

This absolute lack of objectivity might be said to resemble nothing so much as the lack of objectivity these same people had shown during Stalin's life, when they had been so supremely worshipful of his mind and strength of will, of his foresight and genius. Their hysterical worship of Stalin and their total and unconditional rejection of him sprang from the same soil. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

No one has the right to lead other people like sheep. That's something even Lenin failed to understand. The purpose of a revolution is to free people. But Lenin just said: In the past you were led badly, I'm going to lead you well. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Grossman, perhaps tiring slightly of journalism, seems to have longed to convey his thoughts and feelings about the war in fictional form. At this stage, when the Soviet Union was fighting for its life, his ideas were very close to that of the Party line. It was only at Stalingrad, a year later, that his view of the Stalinist regime began to change. This outline, may well have formed part of the idea for The People Immortal, his novel written and published the following year ... — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Klyuchevsky

Sports became a favorite subject of reflection and will soon be the only way of thinking — Vasily Klyuchevsky

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There is a terrible similarity between the principles of Fascism and those of contemporary physics. Fascism has rejected the concept of a separate individuality, the concept of 'a man', and operates only with vast aggregates. Contemporary physics speaks of the greater or lesser probability of occurrences within this or that aggregate of individual particles. And are not the terrible mechanics of Fascism founded on the principle of quantum politics, of political probability? — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

The Ruy Lopez occupied a constant place in my opening repertoire. In it is reflected the classical interpretation of the problem of the centre. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Rozanov

With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history. — Vasily Rozanov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

No artist has painted
A true portrait of Lenin
Ages to come will complete
Lenin's unfinished portrait.
Did Poletaev understand the tragic implication of his lines about Lenin? (pg179) — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Steve Pulcinella

Always remember this ... there is only ONE recipe for strength. A secret recipe that was handed down from Sandow to John Grimek to Paul Anderson to Vasily Alexeev to Bill Kazmaier to me. Now I'm giving you that magical recipe ... hard work plus proper nutrition plus time equals strong. — Steve Pulcinella

Vasily Quotes By Scott Atran

I dedicate this work to Vasily Arkhipov, the deputy commander of a Soviet nuclear submarine off the Cuban shore who said no to his comrades and may have saved the world. That was on October 27, 1962, around the time my father came home from his defense job and told me at the doorstep to our house that there was "only a twenty-percent chance, son" the next day would never come. No terrorist action today remotely poses that kind of existential threat for our world, and I hope you'll keep that in mind in reading on. — Scott Atran

Vasily Quotes By Leigh Bardugo

Try not to let the excitement overwhelm you, but I have more good news.'
I groaned. I knew that tone of voice. 'Don't say it.'
'Vasily is back from Caryeva.'
'You could do the kind thing and drown me now.'
'And suffer alone? I think not.'
'Maybe for your birthday you can ask that he be fitted with a royal muzzle,' I suggested.
'But then we'd miss all his exciting stories about the summer auctions. You're fascinated by the breeding superiority of the Ravkan racehorse, right?'
I let out a whimper. — Leigh Bardugo

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The State became the master. The national element moved from the realm of form to the realm of content; it became what was most central and essential, turning the socialist element into a mere wrapping, a verbal husk, an empty shell. Thus was made manifest, with tragic clarity, a sacred law of life: Human freedom stands above everything. There is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Breathing heavily, Major-General Gudz was making his way towards Mostovskoy. He shuffled along, wheezing and sticking out his lower lip; folds of loose skin rippled over his cheeks and neck. At one time he had been impressively stout, and these sounds and movements were all that remained; now they seemed quite bizarre. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Melika Dannese Lux

Do you often wonder," she continued, desperately hoping her questions would win Vasily over, "what might have been had his gaze fallen upon some other miserable wretch? Yes, you would have been destitute, starving in the streets, scraping for your next meal ... but even beggars are free. — Melika Dannese Lux

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

My fascination for studies proved highly beneficial, it assisted the development of my aesthetic understanding of chess, and improved my endgame play. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Why do people have memories? It would be easier to die - anything to stop remembering. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

When you think about new-born babies being killed in our own lifetime,' he said, 'all the efforts of culture seem worthless. What have people learned from all our Goethes and Bachs? To kill babies? — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip in to it; as for the red bloody meat, the steaming innards - they were being thrown onto the scrapheap. The new age needed only the hide of the Revolution - and this was being flayed off people who were still alive. Those who slipped into it spoke the language of the Revolution and mimicked it's gestures, but their brains, lungs, livers and eyes were utterly different. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Time is a transparent medium. People and cities arise out of it, move through it and disappear back into it. It is time that brings them and time that takes them away. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

The first chess book that I read was Dufresne's self-tutor, published with Lasker's Common Sense in Chess as an appendix. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

It is the writer's duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader's civic duty to learn this truth. To turn away, to close one's eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who have perished. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

And it was not merely tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but hundreds of millions of people who were the obedient witnesses of this slaughter of the innocent. Nor were they merely obedient witnesses: when ordered to, they gave their support to this slaughter, voting in favour of it amid a hubbub of voices. There was something unexpected in their degree of obedience ... The extreme violence of the totalitarian social systems proved able to paralyse the human spirit throughout whole continents. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Here in the forest lay sullen, soot-blackened stones that were the remains of ruined hearths; in abandoned cemeteries were dark headstones that had already half sunk into the ground. Everything inanimate - stones, iron - was being swallowed by the earth, dissolving into it with the years, while green, vegetable life, in contrast, was bursting up from the earth. The boy found the silence over the cold hearths especially painful. And when he came back home, the smell of smoke from the kitchen, the barking of dogs, and the cackling of hens somehow seemed all the sweeter. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Another fact that allowed Fascism to gain power over men was their blindness. A man cannot believe that he is about to be destroyed. The optimism of people standing on the edge of the grave is astounding. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

She's got legs like a stork, no arse worth speaking of, and great cow-like eyes. call that a woman?' 'You just like big tits', chentsov retorted. 'That's an outmoded, pre-revolutionary point of view — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The magic of the revolution had joined with people's fear of death, their horror of torture, their anguish when the first breath of the camps blew on their faces. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

In chess, as in life, a man is his own most dangerous opponent. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

He had lived without her before. He could get over it! In a year or so he'd be able to walk straight past her without his heart so much as missing a beat. He needed her as much as a drunk needs a cork! But he understood all too quickly how vain these thoughts were. How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made out of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There are one or two people - I'm not talking about family, about Zhenya or your mother - whom a pariah can trust. He can contact these people without first waiting for a sign. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

I don't want you to be young and beautiful. I only want one thing. I want you to be kind-hearted - and not just towards cats and dogs. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Villages that had been groaning beneath the iron weight of Stalin's hand breathed a sigh of relief. And the many millions confined in the camps rejoiced. Columns of prisoners were marching to work in deep darkness. The barking of guard dogs drowned out their voices. And suddenly, as if the northern lights had flashed the words through their ranks: "Stalin has died." As they marched on under guard, tens of thousands of prisoners passed the news on in a whisper: "He's croaked ... he's croaked ... " Repeated by thousand upon thousand of people, this whisper was like a wind. Over the polar lands it was still black night. But the ice in the Arctic Ocean had broken; you could now hear the roar of an ocean of voices. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Rozanov

Look everywhere with your eyes; but with your soul never look at many things, but at one. — Vasily Rozanov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The snow here hadn't thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

Despite the development of chess theory, there is much that remains secret and unexplored in chess. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

A mountain had died, its skeleton had been scattered over the ground. Time had aged the mountain; time had killed the mountain-and here lay the mountain's bones. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

He was endowed with the extraordinary powers of endurance characteristic of madmen and simpletons. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone's right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

He was dimly aware that if you wish to remain a human being under Fascism, there is an easier option than survival
death. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Rozanov

All religions will pass but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking into the distance. — Vasily Rozanov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

What's really terrifying is when you realize that bureaucracy isn't simply a growth on the body of the State. If it were only that, it could be cut off. No, bureaucracy is the very essence of the State. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Alekseyev

They came up with a table of pictures of all the shapes of UFOs that have ever been recorded -about fifty ... The study of UFOs may reveal some new forms of energy to us,or at least bring us closer to a solution. — Vasily Alekseyev

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There's nothing more difficult than saying goodbye to a house where you've suffered. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There was a cold wind out on the street. It picked up the dust, whirled it about and suddenly scattered it, flinging it down like black chaff. There was an implacable severity in the frost, in the branches that tapped together like bones, in the icy blue of the tram-lines. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Stalin's hatred for the Old Bolsheviks who opposed him was also a hatred for those aspects of Lenin's character that contradicted what was most essential in Lenin. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

In the blank wall of the world's indifference there had appeared a tiny snakelike fissure — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The world of the human soul suddenly seemed so vast as to make even the raging war seen insignificant. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

A wife! No one else could love a man who had been trampled on by iron feet. She would wash his feet after he had been spat on; she would comb his tangled hair; she would look into his embittered eyes. The more lacerated his soul, the more revolting and contemptible he became to the world, the more she would love him. She would run after a truck; she would wait in queues on Kuznetsky Most, or even by the camp boundary fence, desperate to hand over a few sweets or an onion; she would bake shortbread for him on an oil stove; she would give years of her life just to be able to see him for half an hour ...
Not every woman you sleep with can be called a wife. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The sea was not freedom; it was a likeness of freedom, a symbol of freedom ... How splendid freedom must be if a mere likeness of it, a mere reminder of it, is enough to fill a man with happiness. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There was bread enough for us in the army, on the front line. We were fed by the Russian people. And no one had to teach them how to do it." "You're right there," said the economist. "What matters is that we're Russians. Yes, Russians - that's quite something." The inspector smiled and winked at his companion. It was as if he were saying those well-known words: "The Russian is the elder brother, the first among equals. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

He was telling her here, in this cellar, as he kissed her feet, he had understood love for the first time - not just from other people's words, but in his heart, in his blood. She was dearer to him than all his past, dearer to him than his mother, than Germany, than his future with Maria ... He had fallen in love with her. Great walls raised up by states, racist fury, the heavy artillery and its curtain of fire were all equally insignificant, equally powerless in the face of love.. He gave thanks to fate for allowing him to understand this before he died. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vladimir Lorchenkov

At night," he said, raising a finger, "I hang strands of garlic on her to dry."
"Why not in the cellar?" asked Tudor stupidly.
"The air's stagnant down there. Up here there's some air," Vasily explained. "The body spins around in the breeze, and that's good, because garlic needs ventilation. — Vladimir Lorchenkov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Grigoryevich...Not that he had any real talent himself - but what a lot of deaths of talented people he had witnessed. Young physicists and historians, specialists in ancient languages, philosophers, musicians, young Russian Swifts and Erasmuses - how many of them he had seen put on their "wooden jackets." Prerevolutionary literature had often lamented the fate of serf actors, musicians, and painters. But who was there today to write about the young men and women who had never had the chance to write their books and paint their paintings? The Russian earth is indeed fertile and generous. She gives birth to her own Platos, to her own quick-witted Newtons - but how casually and terribly she devours these children of hers. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Man's innate yearning for freedom can be suppressed but never destroyed. Totalitarianism cannot renounce violence. If it does, it perishes. Eternal, ceaseless violence, overt or covert, is the basis of totalitarianism. Man does not renounce freedom voluntarily. This conclusion holds out hope for our time, hope for the future. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

They soon lost interest in Sofya. She was just one more prisoner -with no more idea of her destination than anyone else. No one asked her name and patronymic; no one remembered her surname. She realized with surprise that although the process of evolution had taken millions of years, these people had needed only a few days to revert to the state of cattle, dirty and unhappy, captive and nameless. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Perfect worlds do not exist. There are only the funny, strange, weeping, singing, truncated, and imperfect universes created by the gods of paintbrush and musical instruments, the gods who infuse their creations with their own blood, their own soul. When he looks at these worlds, the true Lord of Hosts, the creator of the universe, probably cannot help but smile mockingly — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

At the same time there was the good of the poor and the good of the rich. And the good of the whites, the blacks and the yellow races ... More and more goods came into being, corresponding to each sect, race and class ... People began to realise how much blood had been spilt in the name of a petty, doubtful good, in the name of the struggle of this petty good against what is belied to be evil. Sometimes the very concept of good became a scourge, a greater evil than evil itself. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

One objective fact is that in 1939 there were 28 million Ukrainians, compared with 31 million in 1926, at a time when (barring famine) the birth rate was often twice the death rate. Deaths are calculated on this basis at anywhere between 2.4 and 4 million. More sophisticated studies give a figure nearer to 5 million. OGPU's tally from December 1932 to mid-April 1933 give a figure of 2.4 million deaths from famine and cannibalism; by extrapolating these — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The nationalism of a small nation can, with treacherous ease, become detached from its roots in what is noble and human. It then become pitiful, making the nation appear smaller rather than greater. It is the same with nations as with individuals; while trying to draw attention to the inadequacies of others, people all too often reveal their own. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The law fights against life, and life fights against the law. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervour. Instead of valour or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their head from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother ... — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Edinolochniks [individual peasant farmers] are whitewashing their khatas [simple Ukrainian houses]. They look at us with a challenge in their eyes: 'It's Easter.' The implication behind this strange remark in autumn was the hint that they were celebrating the arrival of the most joyful moment of the year. Some historians have suggested that the Germans, with black crosses on their vehicles, were seen as bringing Christian liberation to a population oppressed by Soviet atheism. Many Ukrainians did welcome the Germans with bread and salt, and many Ukrainian girls consorted cheerfully with German soldiers. It is hard to gauge the scale of this phenomenon in statistical terms, but it is significant that the Abwehr, the Germany Army intelligence department, recommended that an army of a million Ukrainians should be raised to fight the Red Army. This was firmly rejected by Hitler who was horrified at the suggestion of Slavs fighting in Wehrmacht uniform. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

They were weeping not because a young man was marrying and leaving his mother but because of the incalculable loss and suffering that Armenians have endured, because they couldn't not weep for relatives of theirs who had perished during the massacres of 1915, because no joy in the world could make them forget their nation's grief and their homeland on the other side of Mount Ararat. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

I've realized now that hope almost never goes together with reason. It's something quite irrational and instinctive. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Neither fate, nor history, nor the anger of the State, nor the glory or infamy of battle has any power to affect those who call themselves human beings. No, whatever life holds in store
hard-won glory, poverty and despair, or death in a labor camp
they will live as human beings and die as human beings, the same as those who have already perished; and in this alone lies man's eternal and bitter victory over all the grandiose and inhuman forces that ever have been or will be ... — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

I have frequently stated that I regard chess as an art form, where creativity prevails over other factors. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Jenny lacked any sense of property - she was constantly apologising to Yevgenia and asking for her permission to open the small upper window in order to let in her elderly tabby cat. Her main interests and worries centered around this cat and how to protect it from her neighbors ... She fed her own rations to the cat, whom she called 'my dear, silver child' The cat adored her; he was a rough sullen beast, but would become suddenly animated and affectionate when he saw her. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

During the course of his life, dozens of interrogators had understood that he was neither a monarchist, nor a Socialist Revolutionary, nor a Social Democrat; that he had never been part of either the Trotskyist or the Bukharinist opposition. He had never been an Orthodox Christian or an Old Believer; nor was he a Seventh-Day Adventist. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

We leafed through a series of the [1941 Soviet] Front newspaper. I came across the following phrase in a leading article: 'The much-battered enemy continued his cowardly advance. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

The most fundamental change in people at this time was a weakening of their sense of individual identity; their sense of fate grew correspondingly stronger. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Zhukovsky

He who fox-like got his rank, Is wolf-like in his office. — Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Chuikov

The battle of Kursk ... the forcing of the Dnieper ... and the liberation of Kiev, left Hitlerite Germany facing catastrophe. — Vasily Chuikov

Vasily Quotes By Svetlana Alexievich

There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called--Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop--someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.

But I was telling you about love. About my love...

-- Lyudmila, Ignatenko,
wife of deceased fireman, Vasily Ignatenko — Svetlana Alexievich

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

In great hearts the cruelty of life gives birth to good. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Rozanov

The religion of this 'I', the poetry of this 'I', and the philosophy of the same 'I' that from Poggio and Felelfo to Byron and Goethe produced a number of works astonishing for their profundity and brilliance have finally exhausted its content; and in the poetry of Decadence we see the rapid falling away of the empty shell of this 'I'. We remarked previously about the exaggeration without the exaggerated object, and about the precious style without the subject of this preciosity, which characterize this poetry - this is so in regard to its form; in regard to its content Decadence is above all hopeless egoism. The world, as an object of love, of interest, even as the object of indignation or contempt, has disappeared from this "poetry"; the world has disappeared, not only as an object exciting some reaction in this vapid 'I', but also as a spectator and possible judge of this 'I'; it is not even present.

("On Symbolists And Decadence") — Vasily Rozanov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Sofya now understood the difference between life and existence: her life had come to an end, but her existence could drag on indefinitely. And however wretched and miserable this existence was, the thought of violent death still filled her with horror. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Does human nature undergo a true change in the cauldron of totalitarian violence? Does man lose his innate yearning for freedom? The fate of both man and the totalitarian State depends on the answer to this question. If human nature does change, then the eternal and world-wide triumph of the dictatorial State is assured; if his yearning for freedom remains constant, then the totalitarian State is doomed. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Ivan tells Anna: I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman ... as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing ... [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else. — Vasily Grossman

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Smyslov

My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, for all the science and sport involved in it. — Vasily Smyslov

Vasily Quotes By Vasily Grossman

Astra is a beauty. ( ... ) Astra is so beautiful that I have no wish to describe her beauty. I will say only that her beauty is the expression of her soul. Her beauty lives in her quiet walk, in her shy movements, in her always-lowered eyelids, in her barely perceptible smile, in the soft outline of her girlish shoulders, in the chastity of her poor, almost beggarly clothing, in her thoughtful grey eyes. She is a white water lily in a pond shadowed by the branches of trees, born amid still, contemplative water. ( ... ) The world of modest female beauty finds its expression in Astra. As for what may lie hidden in the depths of these waters, no-one can say unless he breaks the water's smooth surface, walks barefoot through the cutting sedge and treads the silty, sucking mud - now cold, now strangely warm. But I only stand on the shore, admiring the lily from a distance — Vasily Grossman