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It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
When we remove the snowdrift piled up over Chekhov in recent years, we uncover a man profoundly agitated by social problems; a writer whose social ideals are the same as those we live by; a philosophy of the divinity of man, of fervent faith in man - the faith that moves mountains.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
What makes you think that nonsense is bad? If they'd nurtured and cared for human nonsense over the ages the way they did intelligence, it might have turned into something of special value.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
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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What is it to you if I don't want others to want for me, if I want to want myself - if I want the impossible.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
Individual consciousness is just sickness.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
In adopting the form of the adventure novel, Wells deepened it, raised its intellectual value, and brought into it elements of social philosophy and science. In his own field - though, of course, on a proportionately lesser scale - Wells may be likened to Dostoyevsky, who took the form of the cheap detective novel and infused it with brilliant psychological analysis.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.
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 -
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise - because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment with an excellent toilet and a well-furnished dogma.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential — I know it.
Yevgeny Zamyatin