“I am always frightened of something which exists in the majority of people, but which I cannot explain. The young generation of the period of transition were like me. In our mind we despised our slavery, but we ourselves became cowardly slaves. Our hatred was deep and passionate, but barren, like the mad love of a eunuch.””
“There is something of the preacher essential in every Russian intellectual. It is in our blood; it has been instilled by the whole of Russian literature in the last generations””
“It seems that man was right who said that parting to love is like wind to a fire: it blows out a small one, and makes a large one blaze.””
“Surely the obscure soul of the dog must be far more susceptible to the vibrations of thought than the human. … Do they not bark because they feel the presence of a dead man?””
“And who can say whether my thoughts, independent of weight and time and the obstacles of matter, are not at the same moment being caught by mysterious, delicate, but unconscious receivers in the brain of an inhabitant of Mars as well as in the brain of the dog who barks outside?””
A. I. KuprinA. I. Kuprin was a prominent Russian writer known for his vivid storytelling and deep psychological insight. Born in 1870, he initially pursued a career in the military but soon turned to literature, ...
“I think that a human thought is like a current from some electric centre, an intense, radiating vibration of the imponderable ether, poured out in the spaces of the world, and passing with equal ease through the atoms of stone, iron, and air.””
“It is true the precious schoolboy is very nearly ridiculous, but a sacred respect for his proud free self is already growing up within him, a respect for everything that has been corroded in us by spiritual poverty and anxious paternal morality. We must go to the devil.””
“It was all born suddenly, in a tempestuous wind. Eagles awoke out of turkey eggs.””
“The flame of long pent-up anger broke out and overwhelmed everything: fear of the morrow, respect for parents, love of life, peaceful joys of family happiness.””
“I, who am not afraid of death, was afraid of the shouting of this dull, narrow-minded clod, petrified with professional conceit.””
“But I am afraid of people. I fear people! When from my room I hear drunken men swearing and fighting in the street I go pale with terror.””
“the quiet degradation of the human soul is more horrible than all the barricades and slaughter in the world.””
“I was not the only one to die of the moral contagion, though perhaps I was the weakest of all. But all the past generation has grown up in an atmosphere of sanctimonious tranquillity, of forced respect to its elders, of lack of all individuality and dumbness.””
“My mind opened eagerly to meet them, but my soul was already ruined for ever, soiled and dead. It had been bitten by a mean, weak-nerved timidity, like a tick in a dog’s ear: you tear it off, but the small head remains to grow again into a complete, loathsome insect.””
“These people’s souls are dead: their thoughts are fixed in straight inflexible lines; and they are merciless as only a convinced and stupid man can be.””
“But I say with sorrow that I fear these wooden people, whose view of the world is rigid and unchangeable, who are stupidly self-confident, and have no hesitations, worse than death.””
“Desperately brave generals are often frightened of mice. Sometimes they even boast of their little weakness.””
“But in me he saw at once a weak, yielding will. You can feel it in people at a mere glance”
“He was courteous, obliging, and sugary to them, like a suburban dentist.””