Robert > Robert's Quotes

“… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, Selected Works: The Custom-House, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun

“What more could he need, this old man whose little leisure was divided between day-time gardening and night-time contemplation? Was not that narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the worship of God in the most delicate of his works and in the most sublime? A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in -what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as in rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I must go down to the seas again
to find where I
buried the hatchet with Yesterday.”
― Janet Frame

“From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.”
― Janet Frame, To the Is-land: An Autobiography

“The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“Oh, yes--you
can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has
might on its side--unfortunately; but right it has not.”
― Henrik Johan Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“What sort of truths are they that the majority usually
supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are
beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in
a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.”
― Henrik Johan Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney ...”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“A man is responsible for his ignorance.”
― Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

“[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?”
― J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“Education doesn't make you smarter.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Candle in the Wind

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“The sole substitute for an experience we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can. Society is to blame for not giving free education: it is responsible for the darkness it creates. the soul in darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus