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Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

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Yevgeny Zamyatin
Age: 53 †
Born: 1884
Born: January 1
Died: 1937
Died: January 1
Author
Engineer
Librettist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Prosaist
Satirist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin
Eugene Zamyatin
Two
Paradise
Without
Third
Thirds
Choice
Choices
Happiness
Freedom
Alternative
Given
Alternatives

More quotes by Yevgeny Zamyatin

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I've read and heard a lot of unbelievable stuff about those times when people lived in freedom -- that is, in disorganized wildness.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring - thus he erred himself.
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The knife is the most permanent, the most immortal, the most ingenious of man's creations. The knife was a guillotine the knife is a universal means of resolving all knots.
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The most wonderful thing in life is to be delirious and the most wonderful kind of delirium is being in love. In the morning mist, hazy and amorous, London was delirious. London squinted as it floated along, milky pink, without caring where it was going.
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True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.
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The whole world is one immense woman, and we are in her very womb, we are not yet born, we are joyfully ripening.
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It has never occurred to me before, but this is truly how it is: all of us on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden below, in the belly of the earth. We never think of it. But what if the thin crust under our feet should turn into glass and we should suddenly see?
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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And happiness...Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one...What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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By complex ways, by looking deep into the dark well of the human soul, full of filth, somewhere at the very bottom of it Chekhov at last found his faith. And this faith turned out to be faith in man, in the power of human progress. And man became his god.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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They do not need the sun. Who needs the sun when the eyes glow? Darkness. A woolen fog has wrapped the earth, has dropped a heavy curtain. From far away, from beyond the curtain, comes the sound of drops falling on stone. Far, far away - the autumn, people, tomorrow. (The North)
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for man.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you you hate it because you are afraid of it you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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To reflect the entire spectrum, the dynamics of the adventure novel must be invested with a philosophic synthesis of one kind or another.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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The art of the word is painting + architecture + music.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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The microspeed of the tongue ought to be always slightly less than the microspeed of the thoughts and certainly not ever the reverse.
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The world is kept alive only by heretics.
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The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)
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We comes from God, I from the Devil.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons... we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless Why? and What next?.
Yevgeny Zamyatin