An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A... Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expans...es are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is w...eak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art... mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual's eyes shine, and they start to talk to me about the Russian people.... Something in me says, Watch it, a new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession,... because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »