35 motivating quotes from Russian classics about life
These are some of the most striking quotes from the works of classics and modern authors that’ll make you look at life, love - and maybe even yourselves - from a different angle!
- “Habit was given us in distress by Heaven in lieu of happiness…” (Alexander Pushkin, ‘Eugene Onegin’)
- “Love us dirty, for any one will love us clean.” (Nikolai Gogol, ‘Dead Souls, part II’)
- “The world will be saved by beauty.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘The Idiot’)
- “I think everyone must love life more than anything else in the world. - Love life more than the meaning of it.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’)
- “Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy; only because of that. It’s everything, everything, Whoever learns will, at once, immediately become happy, that same moment.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘Demons’)
- “If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘Demons’)
- “If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘The Insulted and Humiliated’)
- “If you look for perfection, you’'ll never be content.” (Leo Tolstoy, ‘Anna Karenina’)
- “There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.” (Leo Tolstoy, ‘Anna Karenina’)
- “To live an honest life you have to strive hard, get involved, fight, make mistakes, begin something and give it up, begin again and, struggle endlessly. (Leo Tolstoy, from a letter to his aunt Alexandra Tolstaya)
- “Argumentativeness is a trait that removes man from truth.” (Nikolai Leskov, ‘Childhood years’)
- “As long as you remember evil, evil is alive, but let it die, then your soul will live in the hay.” (Nikolai Leskov, ‘Christ Visits a Peasant’)
- “To feel continuously happy, even in moments of grief and sorrow, you have to: a) know how to enjoy what you have and b) be happy at the realization that ‘it could be worse’.” (Anton Chekhov, ‘Life is Wonderful’)
- “Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.” (Anton Chekhov, ‘Uncle Vanya’)
- “I call it good breeding, not so much not to upset the sauce on the table, as not to notice it when some one else has done it.” (Anton Chekhov, ‘The House with the Mezzanine’)
- “Happy people don’t notice whether it is winter or summer.” (Anton Chekhov, ‘Three Sisters’)
- “Healthy and normal people are only the common herd.” (Anton Chekhov, ‘The Black Monk’)
- “You should never ask anyone for anything. Never - and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself. They will make the offer and they will give of their own accord.” (Mikhail Bulgakov, ‘The Master and Margarita’)
- “Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’'t just a fiction, it’'s part of our physical body.” (Boris Pasternak, ‘Doctor Zhivago’)
- “Why should we be ashamed of our fine bodies, given us by nature, when we are not ashamed of the vile acts that we ourselves perpetrate?” (Daniil Kharms, ‘I was born in the reeds. Like a mouse…’)
- Live, eat beefsteaks, make love, grieve over the betrayals of women, and be happy. And may God keep you from the thought of why you’re doing any of it.” (Gaito Gazdanov, ‘An Evening with Claire’)
- “Almost every one of us passes away, having not accomplished even the tenth of what we could have.” (Konstantin Paustovsky, ‘The Time of Great Expectations’)
- “So remember you always have to begin by sowing doubt.” (Brothers Strugatsky, ‘Escape Attempt’)
- “Sometimes I ask myself, what the hell are we all running around for, anyway? To make money? But what the hell do we need money for if all we do is run around making it?” (Brothers Strugatsky, ‘Roadside Picnic’)
- “People don’t understand, how much strife and squalor in their lives originates and has originated at all times from laziness.” (Chingiz Aitmatov, ‘Plakha’)
- “Many people waste away not so much from disease as from their uncontrollable, devouring passion to show themselves better and more important than they are.” (Chingiz Aitmatov, ‘The White Ship’)
- “Is it really worth it to be genuinely upset with anything in life? Everything passes, and this, too, will pass.” (Daniil Granin, ‘Into the Storm’)
- “There are no irreplaceable people. Indeed, there aren’t – it’s true. But there are also no replaceable people, too. There’s not a single replaceable person in the world.” (Konstantin Simonov, ‘The Living and the Dead’)
- “To be jealous means to take revenge on oneself for the mistakes of others.” (Sergei Dovlatov, ‘A Foreign Woman’)
- “Weak men endure life; courageous ones master it.” (Sergei Dovlatov, ‘Pushkin Hills’)
- “It doesn’t matter that you were beaten. It matters that you fought back!” (Leonid Zorin, ‘The Pokrovsky Gate’)
- “When you’re deep in sh*t, you can do two things. First – try and understand why you are stuck in it. Second – get out of it… You only need to get out of sh*t once, then you can forget all about it. But to realize why you are stuck in it you need an entire life.” (Viktor Pelevin, ‘The Sacred Book of the Werewolf’)
- “A man who has love in his heart can enjoy his bitter life, full of struggle, can carry its burdens on his shoulders with gratitude, can survive in a battle with any calamity and overcome everything.” (Alexey Ivanov, ‘Heart of Parma’)
- “In old age you begin to understand that you have to change yourself, not your wives……” (Dina Rubina, ‘The White Dove of Cordoba’)
- “Only someone with inner freedom can laugh at himself, and allow others to laugh at him.” (Lyudmila Ulitskaya, ‘Daniel Stein, Interpreter’)
