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The First Circle
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Top 10 Best Quotes
“So in our own poor hides and from our miserable comrades we learn the nature of satiety. Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.”
“...you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of everything. For a person you've taken everything from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again.”
“What is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you.”
“...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends.”
“Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.”
“We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a scent, and that scent tells you how to act before your head does.”
“If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?”
“If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it.”
“Relations between a man and a woman are always strange: nothing can be foreseen, they have no predictable direction, no law. Sometimes you come to a dead end, where there is nothing to do but sit down and weep; all the words have been said, and to no purpose; all the arguments have been thought of, and shattered. But then sometimes, at a chance look or word, the wall doesn't start to crack, but simply melts away. And where there was nothing but darkness, a clear path appears again, where two people can walk. Just a path — perhaps only for a minute.”
“Freedom or prison--what's the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason.”
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Book Keywords:
friendship, bobynin, communism, scent, freedom, power, prison, thought, tyranny, stalinism, happiness, fear, sense, 1968, contentment, humanity, discipline, human-nature, liberty, gulag, reason