Quotes from Yevgeny Zamyatin

Then you love it. For if you fear it because it is stronger than you, hate it because you fear it, you love it. For you cannot subject it to yourself. One loves only the things one cannot conquer.

I feel myself. But it's only the eye with a lash in it, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn't seem to exist. So it's clear, isn't it? Self-consciousness is just a disease.

Revolutions are infinite.

El deber y el crimen jamás pueden coincidir en una misma cosa.

If circumstances should make it impossible (temporarily, I hope) for me to be a Russian writer, perhaps I shall be able, like the Pole Joseph Conrad, to become for a time an English writer... ("Letter To Stalin")

But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at least one year, with the right to return as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there is at least a partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role of the literary artist. ("Letter To Stalin")

N-no-o, all that excitement, it wouldn't reach us,' Timosha spoke gloomily. 'We're like the sunken city of Kitezh, living at the bottom of the lake. We do not hear a thing, and the water over us is muddy and sleepy. And on the surface, way above - why, everything's in flames, and the alarms are ringing.' ("A Provincial Tale")

Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naïve and so frighteningly complex.

O percurso natural para se passar da nulidade à grandeza é esquecermo-nos de que somos um grama e sentirmos que somos a milionésima parte duma tonelada.

This woman was just as irritating to me as an irrational term that accidently creeps into your equation and can't be factored out.

Forget that you're a gram and feel yourself a millionth part of a ton.

My heart was light, quick, like an aero, and carrying, carrying me upward. I knew: tomorrow held some sort of joy. But what would it be?

It's clear that you want to seem original. But is it possible that you—?" "It is clear," interrupted I-330, "that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently, to be original means to violate the law of equality. What was called in the language of the ancients 'to be common' is with us only the fulfilling of one's duty. For—

Rüzgarla yerinden kopan bir yaprak sükunetle aÅŸa?? düÅŸer ama düÅŸerken döner, k?vr?l?r ve tan?d??? her dalla, her filizle, gövdeyle göz göze gelir... Yanlar?ndan geçtiÄŸim her kafaya, duvarlar?n saydam buzuna, bulutlara uzanan Ak?mtoplar Kulesi'yle iÅŸte öyle göz göze geldim.

Alçak gönüllülük erdem, gurursa kusurdur. "Biz" tanr?dan, "Ben" ÅŸeytandan gelir.

Bir nokta, her ÅŸeyden daha fazla bilinmeyen içerir. Tüm yapmas? gereken k?p?rdamas?, az?c?k yerinden oynamas?d?r; binlerce deÄŸiÅŸik eÄŸriye, yüzlerce kat? biçime dönüÅŸebilir. K?p?rdamak istemiyorum... Korkuyorum. Neye dönüÅŸeceÄŸim?

The elections themselves have rather a symbolic meaning. They remind us that we are a united, powerful organism of millions of cells, that—to use the language of the "gospel" of the ancients—we are a united church. The history of the United State knows not a single case in which upon this solemn day even a solitary voice has dared to violate the magnificent unison. They

Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers have to be children. Precisely like children, and there should always be: but what next?

And it seems to me that everyone is like me—they're all afraid of the slightest movement . . . Everyone's sitting all closed up in his own glass cage waiting for something.

There were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness.

Now, think of a square, a living, beautiful square. And imagine that it must tell you about itself, about its life. You understand, a square would scarcely ever think of telling you that all its four angles are equal: this has become so natural, so ordinary to it that it's simply no longer consciously aware of it. And so with me: I find myself continually in this square's position.

Let my notes, like the most sensitive seismograph, record the curve of even the most insignificant vibrations of my brain: for it is precisely such vibrations that are sometimes the forewarning of...

Is it possible that that insanity called love and jealousy does exist, and not only in the idiotic books of the ancients? What seems most strange is that I, I! … Equations, formulae, figures, and suddenly this! I can't understand it, I can't!

I ask you: what have people – from the very cradle- prayed for dreamed about and agonized over They wanted someone anyone to tell them once and for all what happiness is – and then to attach them to this happiness with a chain…