August 1914 Quotes

“As he spoke, he looked into their faces and saw, as though in his own features, that fundamentally they all bore the indelible impress of a similar background: army tradition; long spells of garrison service in a world isolated from the rest of society; a sense of alienation, of being despised by that society and ridiculed by liberal writers; the official ban on discussing politics and political literature, resulting in a blunting or stultifying of the intellect; a permanent shortage of money; and yet, despite it all, the knowledge that they represented, in purified and concentrated form, the vitality and courage of the whole nation.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, August 1914

“Why is it that all the main work of breaking down human souls went on at night? Why, from their very earliest years, did the Organs select the night? Because at night, the prisoner torn from sleep, even though he has not yet been tortured by sleeplessness, lacks his normal daytime equanimity and common sense. He is more vulnerable.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914

“No one would have guessed it from his face, but he was aware of it: a layer of his soul had been shaken loose and was slowly, gradually slipping, coming adrift.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“Books no longer inspired reverent joy but dread—dread that he would never be able to hold his own with an author, that every new book he read would seduce and enslave him.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“Varya gave him her broadest summer smile. “Don’t you know me?” It had happened a long time ago. She had only just moved from the municipal school to a middle form in the high school, changing her own black apron (with shoulder straps) for a green smock. But the two older school friends from out of town with whom, as an orphan, she shared lodgings already had dealings with a certain Yemmanuil Yenchman (he was always introduced”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“Instead, the Emperor was at pains to demonstrate his confidence, his goodwill, his particular predilection for these people by pardoning them in advance—pardoning that sharp-toothed weasel, that champion bureaucrat; that sycophant courtier, that giddy theorist of criminal investigation who had swallowed such trashy bait; and that phantom functionary, that faceless person who had sprung from nowhere and was on his way back there.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“It is as Thou hast ordered it, O Lord, Thou whose designs are beyond our understanding. However much it is Thy will for each of us to do, however many times we exceed the limit of all we had thought possible, at each new horizon, even at the final horizon of death, there is still more left undone to trouble us. … There is so much for which I feel myself needed, but Thou hast bidden me be still and struggle no more.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“An age of unlimited civil freedom is also one of irresponsible accusations.)”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“The desire for property is as natural as hunger, as the urge to continue one’s kind, or as any other inborn characteristic of man,” and it must be satisfied. Peasant ownership of land is a guarantee of order in the state. The peasant without land of his own lends a ready ear to false doctrine, and is susceptible to those who urge him to satisfy his desire for land by force. The solid peasant on land of his own is a barrier against all destructive movements, against any form of communism, which is why all socialists are so desperately anxious not to see the peasant released from the slavery of the commune, not to let him build up his strength. (And of course overcrowded villages make the work of agitators easier.) Land reform will make the incendiarism of the Socialist Revolutionaries a thing of the past.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“like Tolstoy’s Kutuzov, he knew that one must never take any abrupt and decisive steps of one’s own; that nothing but muddle could ever come of a battle begun before it wants to begin; that warfare always goes its own way, always goes as it must go, irrespective of the plans of mere men; that events follow their inevitable course, and that the best general is the one who refuses to interfere with them.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“Golden words, those—“ to avoid bloodshed.” Any human action can be wrapped in golden phrases. “To avoid bloodshed”—so noble, so humane! What could anyone possibly say against it? Only, perhaps, that if your object is to avoid bloodshed you should have the foresight not to become a general.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“Praying that he and all of us may obtain God’s mercy, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the remission of all our sins, let us dedicate one another and our lives wholly unto Christ our God!” And soaring above the sky, beyond the sun, straight to the throne of the All-Highest, from the breasts of fourteen men, their voices now effortlessly blending, rose—not their petition, but their act of sacrifice, of self-abnegation.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“Through the mist and the buzzing that had muffled Samsonov’s thoughts these past few days, and today more than ever, something quite irrelevant suddenly forced its way and floated to the surface—something from his school days, a single phrase from his German reader: “Es war die höchste Zeit sich zu retten.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“As Napoleon had said, a general who lets his imagination run away with him cannot be a great commander in the field.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“what was neither a horse nor a cannon must be an infantryman!”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914: A Novel: The Red Wheel I

“The country one lives in is in trouble. So which is right: to say, "Go to hell, I'll have none of you," or to say, "I want to help you, I belong here"?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August 1914