20 pieces of wisdom from Russian writers
The authors of classic Russian novels didn't shy away from philosophizing. Indeed, today we understand that they knew a lot about the meaning of life, the soul, work and love!
1. Habit to us is heaven sent:
A substitute for happiness. (Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin)
2. We deem all men noughts
But see ourselves as entities. (Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin)
3. Russians have an enemy, an implacable and dangerous enemy, without which they would be titans. That enemy is indolence. (Nikolai Gogol, from a letter to K. S. Aksakov, 1841)
4. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know that he's happy; only because of that. That's all there is to it! Whoever realizes this will become happy at once, that very instant. (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed)
5. If you want to triumph over the whole world, triumph over yourself. (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed)
6. Man is a creature that can grow accustomed to anything, and I think that is his finest definition. (Fydor Dostoevsky, Notes from the House of the Dead)
7. Every man, in order to act, must believe that what he does is important and good. (Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection)
8. Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have remained there unnoticed. (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)
9. All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)
10. I only know two true miseries in life: a remorseful conscience and illness. And happiness is merely the absence of these two evils. (Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace)
11. It's not a question of pessimism or optimism. It's simply that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have no brain. (Anton Chekhov, The House with the Mezzanine)
12. It is difficult to understand the human soul, but it is still more difficult to understand one's own soul. (Anton Chekhov, The Shooting Party, or Drama During a Hunt)
13. There's nothing worse than knowing someone else's secret and not being able to help. (Аnton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya)
14. When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery! (Мaxim Gorky, The Lower Depths)
15. It seems to me that only unsuccessful, unhappy people like to argue. Happy people live in silence. (Мaxim Gorky, The Life of Klim Samgin)
16. A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves and lungs rely. (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
17. People are garrulous when they have nothing to say. Many cases of long-windedness are caused by an inadequacy of thought and feeling. (Andrei Platonov, Makar the Doubtful)
18. I prefer to be alone, as long as I'm with someone… (Sergei Dovlatov, The Suitcase)
19. People need money so that they never have to think about it… (The Strugatsky Brothers, Roadside Picnic)
20. A soul that has committed a betrayal interprets any unexpected turn of events as the beginning of retribution. (Fazil Iskander, Rabbits and Boa Constrictors)
