Quote

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Age: 89 †
Born: 1918
Born: December 11
Died: 2008
Died: January 1
Historian
Militant
Military Personnel
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Public Figure
School Teacher
Screenwriter
Writer
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Good
Willing
Gulags
Lines
Dividing
Evil
Cuts
Inspirational
Destroy
Human
Piece
Humans
Line
Heart
Cutting
Every
Pieces

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Image
If you want to change the world, who do you begin with, yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves and do the things that we need to do and become the best person we can be, we have a much better chance of changing the world for the better.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
Who will dare say he has defined art?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
It's quite enough to show a well-beaten dog the whip.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
Nowadays we don't think much of a man's love for an animal we laugh at people who are attached to cats. But if we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
Even the most broad-minded of us can embrace only that part of truth into which our own snout has blundered.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
In our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
Shall I describe the happiness it gave me to go into the classroom and pick up the chalk? ... It seemed to me the supreme, heartbreaking happiness to enter a classroom carrying a register as that bell rang, and start a lesson with the mysterious air of one about to unfold wonders.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
You're sincere, but in order not to upset your views you avoid talking with people who think differently. You pick your thoughts from conversations with people like yourself, from books written by people like yourself. In physics they call it resonance. You start out with modest opinions, but they match and build each other up to a scale.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
Too much art was no art at all. Like candy instead of bread!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
Still, everybody wants to eat.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century... I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
If one is a professional soldier, it is part of one's job to die sooner or later.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
The less you speak, the more you will hear.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
And the over-all fact that you are a frail vessel full of errors.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Image
It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn