Sedulia's Quotations

On Gogol: He aspired to great heights and was terrified that death might keep him from attaining them

He aspired to great heights and was terrified that death might keep him from attaining them...Even in his boyhood, he said, he was fired by the desire to "Make (his) life useful" and would break into a cold sweat at the thought that he might perish without achieving fame. His relations with others were conditioned by this desire; the world was his audience or his congregation, and he spent his life entertaining, instructing, preaching-- always with the restless intensity of one who feels himself to be constantly under threat of death.

        --Helen Muchinic, about Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) in the New York Review of Books, 31March 1977

Dostoevsky's Svidrigaylov on death

"...ghosts are, so they say, bits and pieces of other worlds, the beginning of them. There is no reason, of course, why a healthy man should see them, because a healthy man is, above all,  a man of this earth and he must, therefore, only live the life of this earth for the sake of order and completeness. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of his organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world begins to become apparent, and the more ill he is, the more closely does he come in touch with the other world, so that when he dies, he goes straight to the other world. I worked it out a long time ago. If  you believe in a future life, you could also believe in that."

"I do not believe in a future life," Raskolnikov said.

Svidrigaylov sat lost in thought.

"And what," he said suddenly, "if there are only spiders there, or something of the sort?"

        --Fyodor Dostoevski (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment (pub. 1866), tr. by [unknown]

Trotski: Perhaps you are not interested in war, but war is interested in you

Perhaps you are not interested in war, but war is interested in you.

        --Léon Trotski

Peut-être la guerre ne vous intéresse-t-elle pas, mais elle s'intéresse à vous.

On Power and the Powerless: Lu Xun, Nikita Khruschev, Franz Kafka, Thomas Jefferson, a proverb and a French couplet

Those with real power do not open their mouths, but they kill people....In nature it is also like this. When the hawk catches the sparrow, the hawk is silent. The sparrow shrieks little cries. When the cat catches the mouse, the cat is silent, the mouse squeaks. In the end, it is the one which opens its mouth who is eaten by the one that doesn't open its mouth.  --Lu Xun (1881-1936), Chinese novelist, in a speech given in 1927

In 1956, Nikita Khruschev made his "secret" speech to the Soviet party congress, in which he strongly criticized Joseph Stalin and began to dismantle the Stalinist legend. He is said to have shocked the assemblage with his grim narration of Stalin's horrors and his statement that those responsible had to be held accountable.

At one point in the speech, a voice cried out: "And where were you, Comrade Khruschev, when all these crimes were being committed?" Khruschev paused, looked out over the hall, and in a thunderous voice demanded, "Who said that?" The hall was silent. Khruschev then called out, "Whoever said that, stand up."  Again, no one moved.  Then Khruschev looked in the general direction the voice had come from, and said, "Comrade, where you are now is where I was then."     --The Road From Here, Senator Paul Tsongas (1941-1997)

Cet animal est très méchant. Quand on l'attaque il se défend. [This animal is very wicked. When it is attacked it defends itself.] --unknown French ca 1868

Es kamen zwei Soldaten und ergriffen mich. Ich wehrte mich, aber sie hielten fest. [Two soldiers came and seized me. I defended myself, but they held fast.--Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Fragments from Notebooks and Loose Pages

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. --Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in a letter, 23 September 1800. This phrase is inscribed on the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial.

If the stone fall upon the egg, alas for the egg. If the egg fall upon the stone, alas for the egg. --Proverb, probably Chinese: although also listed as Bulgarian, Chechen, Arab, and English.