Happiness doesn't depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to scratch from life, only our attitude towards them. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn More Quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn More Quotes From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn In all probability an outburst of desperation in the midst of general submissiveness will always help. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn desperation midst helping If someone asked you, why not help him out? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn why-not ifs helping You took my freedom away a long time ago and you can't give it back because you haven't got it yourself. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn freedom giving long History is too slow for our life, for our hearts. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn art-history heart history ... but food eaten quickly isn't food. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn food First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn philosophical political spiritual The task must be to banish from mankind's thought the idea that anybody has the right to use force against righteousness, against justice, against mutual agreements. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn agreement justice ideas There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn thinker clear Nothing worthy can be built on a neglect of higher meanings and on a relativistic view of concepts and culture as a whole. Indeed, something greater than a phenomenon confined to art can be discerned shimmering here beneath the surface - shimmering not with light but with an ominous crimson glow. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn light views art It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn design communism path We have arrived at an intellectual chaos. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn chaos intellectual I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn bars tasks life ... the inexorable lesson of centuries: suffering must be borne; there is no way out. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lessons suffering way Friends! Let us try to help if we are worth anything at all! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn helpful my-friends trying When the whole discussion of "developing a national idea" hastily began in post-Soviet Russia, I tried to pour cold water on it with the objection that, after all the devastating losses we had experienced, it would be quite sufficient to have just one task: the preservation of a dying people. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn russia loss ideas There is something predetermined in the mutual attraction between Germany and Russia. Otherwise, this attraction would not have survived two ghastly World Wars. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mutual-attraction russia war When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn russia choices real The term "national idea" is an unclear one. One might think of it as a widely shared understanding among a people as to the desired way of life in their country, an idea that holds sway over the population. A unifying concept like that can be useful, but should never be created artificially or imposed top-down by the powers-that-be. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn top-down country thinking Periods of rapid and fundamental change were never favourable for literature. Significant works, have nearly always and everywhere been created in periods of stability, be it good or bad. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn significant literature fundamentals For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lion communism dog people
