A Country Doctor's Notebook Quotes

“Ah, what stars there are in the Ukraine. I’ve been living in Moscow almost seven years, but I still feel drawn to my homeland. My heart aches, I get a terrible urge to board a train and be off. To see the cliffs covered in”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“For an addict there is one pleasure of which no one can deprive him—his ability to spend his time in absolute solitude. And solitude means deep, significant thought; it means, calm, contemplation—and wisdom.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“No. Never, not even when falling asleep, will I ever proudly mutter about nothing being able to surprise me. No. As one year has passed, so will another, and it will be just as rich in surprises as the first one... And so I have to go on dutifully learning.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“Clever people have long been aware that happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Young Doctor's Notebook

“Pogroms were whipped up every minute and people were murdered daily, especially Jews of course.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“I was not even aware of getting dressed, which was no simple matter: trousers and shirt, felt boots, over my shirt a leather jerkin, then an overcoat topped by a sheepskin, fur hat, and my bag containing caffeine, camphor, morphine, adrenalin, clamps, sterile dressings, hypodermic, probe, a Browning automatic, cigarettes, matches, watch, stethoscope.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“Дождь льет пеленою и скрывает от меня мир.
И пусть скроет его от меня.
Он не нужен мне, как и я никому не нужен в мире.”
― Михаил Булгаков, Записки юного врача

“snow, the Dnieper … there’s no more beautiful city in the world than Kiev.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“It was after one o’clock when I went back to my room. In a pool of light on the desk in my study lay Döderlein open at the page headed ‘Dangers of Version’. For another hour after that, sipping my cooling tea, I sat over it, turning the pages. And an interesting thing happened: all the previously obscure passages became entirely comprehensible, as though they had been flooded with light; and there, at night, under the lamplight in the depth of the countryside I realised what real knowledge was. ‘One can gain a lot of experience in a country practice,’ I thought as I fell asleep, ‘but even so one must go on and on reading, reading … more and more …”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“I had to be calm and cautious yet at the same time utterly decisive and unfaltering.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“Miserable, I paced up and down the twilit study. When I came up to the lamp I caught sight of the reflection of my pale face and of the light of the lamp in the window set against the boundless darkness of the fields. ‘I’m like Dmitry the Pretender—nothing but a sham,’ I thought stupidly and sat down at the table again.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“It’s not my fault,’ I repeated to myself stubbornly and unhappily. ‘I’ve got my degree and a first class one at that. Didn’t I warn them back in town that I wanted to start off as a junior partner in a practice? But no, they just smiled and said, “You’ll get your bearings.” So now I’ve got to find my bearings. Suppose they bring me a hernia? Just tell me how I’ll find my bearings with that? And more to the point, what will a hernia patient feel like when I get my hands on him? Will he find his bearings in the next world?’ The thought made my blood run cold.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“لا, لن أقول بعد اليوم أبداً إنني أعرف كل شيء, وإن شيئاً ما لن يدهشني. لن أقول ذلك حتى وأنا أنام. ومرّ عام, وسينقضي عامُ آخر سيكون غنيا بالمفاجآت الى حدّ كبير, مثله مثل الأول ... هذا يعني أنني يجب أن أتعلم دون غرور.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“No, even when I’m on the verge of sleep I shall never again boast that nothing can surprise me. Now that this year is past, the next year will be just as full of surprises as the first. One never stops learning.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“For another hour after that, sipping my cooling tea, I sat over it, turning the pages. And an interesting thing happened: all the previously obscure passages became entirely comprehensible, as though they had been flooded with light; and there, at night, under the lamplight in the depth of the countryside I realised what real knowledge was. ‘One can gain a lot of experience in a country practice,’ I thought as I fell asleep, ‘but even so one must go on and on reading, reading … more and more …”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“No,’ I reflected, ‘I will fight against this Egyptian darkness for as long as fate keeps me here in the wilderness. Granulated sugar … ye gods!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“قرأت هذا منذ زمن ليس ببعيد، بل لقد وضعت خطوطًا تحت كل كلمة متمعنًا فيها. وتصورت ذهنيًا العلاقة بين الأجزاء وأسلوب العلاج كله. وقد تهيّأ لي وقتها أن النص قد طبع برمته في دماغي. أما الآ، فلا أذكر من كل ما قرأت إلا عبارة واحدة: الوضعية الاعتراضية هي وضعية ولاد عسيرة جدًا
الحقيقة هي الحقيقة، وضعية ولادة عسيرة جدًا، ليست عسيرة على المرأة فقط، بل على الطبيب الذي أنهى دراسته الجامعية منذ ستة أشهر فقط”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“سقط مساعدي على الأرض فارتطم محدثًا صوتًا، لكننا لم نكترث له. غرزت المبضع في الرغامى ثم زرعت فيها الأنبوبة الفضية، فانزلقت بحذق، لكن ليدكا بقيت بلا حلاك ولم يدخل الهواء إلى مجراها التنفسي كما ينبغي أن يكون الأمر. تنفست الصعداء وتوقفت، لم يكن علي أن أفعل شيئًا بعد هذا، كنت أود أن أعتذر من شخصٍ منا، أو أعترف بطيشي عندما قررت أن أنتسب إلى كلية الطب.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“Clever people have long been aware that happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“The first blast of the snowstorm snatched me up like a scrap of torn newspaper and transported me from a practice in the depths of the countryside to the town. What, you may wonder, is so special about a country town? If like me you have ever spent the winters snowbound and the summers deep in a landscape of sparse, monotonous woodland, without a single day off in more than a year; if you have ever torn the wrapper off last week's newspaper with your heart beating as if you were a lover joyfully ripping open a pale blue envelope; if you have ever driven twelve miles in a tandem-harnessed sleigh to a woman in labor, then you may realize what the town mean to me.

Kerosene lamps may be very cosy, but I prefer electricity.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“Воздух не сытный, его глотать нельзя... в теле нет клеточки, которая бы не жаждала... Чего? Этого нельзя ни определить, ни объяснить. Словом, человека нет. Он выключен. Движется, тоскует, страдает труп. Он ничего не хочет, ни о чем не мыслит, кроме морфия. Морфия!”
― Михаил Булгаков, Записки юного врача

“о, какие тусклые, казенные, ничего не говорящие слова!
"Тоскливое состояние"!..”
― Михаил Булгаков, Записки юного врача

“Ночь течет, черна и молчалива. Где-то оголенный лес, за ним речка, холод, осень. Далеко, далеко взъерошенная буйная Москва. Мне ни до чего нет дела, мне ничего не нужно, и меня никуда не тянет.

Гори, огонь, в моей лампе, гори тихо, я хочу отдыхать после московских приключений, я хочу их забыть.”
― Михаил Булгаков, Записки юного врача

“Tout à coup on perd pied dans les ténèbres fangeuses du sommeil, mais un tressaillement, et on refait surface aussitôt.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook

“For Bulgakov, however, the greatest underlying source of unease, amounting at times to despair, was something less tangible though very real to him, since it occurs as an ever-present refrain throughout these stories. This was the sense of being a lone soldier of reason and enlightenment pitted against the vast, dark, ocean-like mass of peasant ignorance and superstition... [in] the fearsome, pre-literate, mediaeval world of the peasantry”
― Michael Glenny, A Country Doctor's Notebook