Quote

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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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
Course
Absolute
Happiness
Sign
Minus
Desire
Clearly
Marked
Wells
Ridiculous
Torment
Well
Carry
Plus
Always
Divine
Desires
Mistake
Prejudice
Courses
Absolutes

More quotes by Yevgeny Zamyatin

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All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow there is no final number.
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Truth is the first thing that present-day literature lacks. The writer has drowned himself in lies, he is too accustomed to speak prudently, with a careful look over his shoulder.
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Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.
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.
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But you can't plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. (The North)
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturabtion … whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about them simply because this once in a thousand years has come today.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine the knife is the universal means of solving all knots and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring - thus he erred himself.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind . . . .
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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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.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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At night numbers must sleep it is their duty, just as it is their duty to work in the daytime. Not sleeping at night is a criminal offense.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken - errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive truth reassures, error disturbs.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Her smile was a bite, and I was its target.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Only the rational and useful is beautiful.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.
Yevgeny Zamyatin