In the First Circle
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Top 10 Best Quotes
“are there really people on this earth who deliberately set out to do evil things? Who say to themselves, I want to hurt people, to inflict all the pain I can, to make their lives impossible?”
“So the steel chain forged with such reptilian cunning snapped at the link that had been fashioned from a woman’s heart.”
“Лучше хлеб с водой чем пирог с бедой Better bread and water than pie with trouble”
“A prisoner five years between the shafts never hurries. He knows that what comes next can only be worse.”
“Of course their turn will come. There is a destructive force in prosperity. To prolong it for a year, a day, a man will sacrifice not only all that belongs to others but all that is sacred. He will defy the dictates of common prudence.”
“None of his books had prepared him for his new insight. “The People” did not mean all those who speak your language, nor yet the chosen few branded with the fiery mark of genius. Neither birth nor the labor of your hands nor the privileges of education admit you to membership of the People. Only your soul can do that. And each of us fashions his soul himself, year in and year out. You must strive to temper and to cut and polish your soul so as to become a human being. And hence a humble component of your people. A man with such a soul cannot as a rule expect to prosper, to go far in his career, to get rich. Which is why for the most part “the People” is not to be found at the higher levels of society.”
“In one of my prewar lectures—they were devilishly daring!—I developed this excerpt from Goethe into the elegiac idea that there is no such thing as happiness, that it is either unattainable or illusory. Then, suddenly, a note was passed to me, a page torn out of a miniature notebook—squared paper: “ ‘But I’m in love—and I am happy! What do you say to that?’ ” “What did you say?” “What can anybody say?”
“He was condemned precisely because he prospered so well, he had no desire to risk his life, to defend the good life.”
“Душа болит за производство, а ноги тянут в санчасть - The soul hurts for production, and the legs are pulled to the medical unit”
“You’re an eclectic. You pluck pretty feathers from every bird to beautify your own tail!”
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Book Keywords:
life-lessons, russian, proverbs, glubb-cycle, humor, human-nature, russian-literature
