Wise thoughts
Great Russian poet, prose writer, playwright, artist, officer.
Quote: 171 - 187 of 210
The judgment of general opinion, erroneous everywhere, occurs, however, in our country on completely different grounds than in the rest of Europe; in England, for example, bankruptcy - an indelible dishonor - is a sufficient reason for suicide. A depraved prank in Germany closes the doors of good society forever (I’m not talking about France: in Paris alone there are more different general opinions than in the whole world) - but here?.. an announced bribe-taker is received very well everywhere: he is justified with the phrase: and! who doesn’t do this!.. The coward is treated kindly everywhere, because he is a quiet fellow, but involved in history! - O! there is no mercy for him: mothers say about him: *God knows what kind of person he is*, - and daddies add: *Bastard!..* (*Princess Ligovskaya*, 1836)
Judging the soul and mind of a woman by dancing a mazurka with her is the same as judging the opinion and feelings of a journalist by reading one of his articles. (*Princess Ligovskaya*, 1836)
Happiness is only where they love us, where they believe us.
So the moss-covered bottle is centuries old
Such is the poet: as soon as a thought flashes,
How he will shed with his pen
Whole soul; the sound of a loud lyre
The light enchants, and in silence
Sings, lost in a heavenly dream...
There there is good for good, and blood for blood, and hatred is immeasurable, like love. ("Izmail-Bey")
Now they regret it! People are fair to the dead! But what is this regret? One tear of friendship is worth all the exclamations of the crowd! (*Strange Man*, 1831)
Crowd gloomy and soon forgotten
We will pass over the world without noise or trace,
Without giving up the centuries a single fertile thought,
Not the genius of the work begun.
The same empty person who is filled with himself.
Here, here it goes through the soul
There is darkness of passions and sensations,
And often a gigantic thought turns on
The spring of an ardent mind...
And if you defeat the enemy with skill,
You will make fate fall at your feet with humility -
Then Napoleon himself
You will find it both pathetic and ridiculous. - (Kazarin about the game)
(*Masquerade*, 1835-1836)
You love a woman... you sacrifice her honor,
Wealth, friendship and life, perhaps;
You surrounded her with fun and flattery,
But why should she thank you?
You did it all out of passion
And pride, partly, -
To have her, you sacrificed everything,
And not for her happiness.
Yes, think about it calmly
And you can say for yourself that everything in the world is conditional. - (Kazarin to Arbenin)
(*Masquerade*, 1835-1836)
That’s why you loved me: joys are forgotten, but sorrows are never forgotten. ("Hero of our time")
Respect has boundaries, but love has none.
Moving away from the conditions of society and approaching nature, we involuntarily become children; everything acquired falls away from the soul, and it becomes again the same as it once was, and, most likely, will be someday again. (Part I “Bella”) (“Hero of Our Time”, 1838-1839)
This is Asia for me! Whether it’s people or rivers, you can’t rely on it! (Part I “Bella”, Staff Captain Maxim Maksimych) (“Hero of Our Time”, 1838-1839)
To die like that! the loss to the world is small; and I’m pretty bored myself. I am like a man yawning at a ball who does not go to bed only because his carriage is not yet there. But the carriage is ready... goodbye!.. (“Hero of Our Time”, 1838-1839)
Good tone reigns only where you don’t hear anything unnecessary, but alas! my friends! but how little you will hear there. (*Princess Ligovskaya*, 1836)
Moving away from the conditions of society and closer to nature,
we unwittingly become children;
everything acquired falls away from the soul,
and she becomes again the way she once was
and, surely, it will happen again someday.
M. Yu. Lermontov
On November 11, 2014, the anthology “45: Parallel Reality” was signed for publication, which is published within the framework of the Forum of Creative Unions dedicated to the Year of Culture in Russia “Unity of Music - Peoples Unity”, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and taking into account the results of the international poetic Internet marathon .
We have already reported that the book includes selections of 54 poets living in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Lithuania, USA, France, Australia. A full list of project participants can be seen on the double page title published today.
The circulation of the publication is 345 copies, the expected time of receipt from the AGRUS printing house (Stavropol) is December 1, 2014.
Well, the words of Mikhail Lermontov, included in the epigraph, are given on the front title of the anthology along with a quote from Alexander Green’s novel “Running on the Waves.”
I think now is the time to provide the text of the preface to the new anthology-45.
Dust of all roads
When I looked into the mailbox in February 1967, I felt a cosmic chill: the first issue of Foreign Literature, entirely devoted to science fiction, had been delivered. It is clear that the issue was read from cover to cover, and the names of Robert Sheckley, William Tenn and Ray Bradbury entered into mental usage forever. The idea of a parallel reality immediately became simple and close. Just like the concept of mental reality. After all, a person never resides entirely and completely in just one point in space - he constantly travels mentally, transporting himself through time.
Perhaps that is why the custom of seating a writer or poet on a geographical pole began to seem somewhat naive to me. Both writers and readers travel across continents of imagination. The word allows them to see places they have not been to, which, perhaps, they themselves have not been to. Of course, in poetry there is always a “genius loci”, but it, feeding the imagination, acts as a root, an umbilical cord, and not an anchor. Poetic teleportation serves mutual understanding, bringing together the most distant - physically - souls, and the motto of the Forum of Creative Unions dedicated to the Year of Culture in Russia “Unity of ties - peoples’ unity”, of course, echoes the main idea of the anthology “ 45: parallel real reality”, published following the results of the online marathon Secret pipes of the “45th parallel”. The path to the implementation of the book project was long and difficult, many ideas had to be abandoned: for example, the sacred number 45 was transformed first into 50, and then into the lucky shapeshifter 54. But, of course, even parallel reality cannot accommodate all the strong poets. 
We did not deprive the authors of their geographical roots, but invited them to expand them, to point out the hidden, implicit roots, welcoming those “settlements” that do not exist, including tea Troy and Carthage, Solovets and Zurbagan. It is in this way that we illustrate the concept of parallel reality, which residents of the most different corners can meet world Meet, communicate and understand each other.
Let's talk about this reality a little more. After the release of the film “The Matrix” and others like it, many, many believed that with the help of computers it is possible to create illusory worlds, the inhabitants of which will not only consider themselves real people, but will also gain the ability to move from virtuality to reality and vice versa. By and large, there is little new in this: after all, even cavemen, depicting scenes of a successful hunt (virtual, in modern terms), thereby tried to influence the outcome of the hunt that faced them in reality. In other words, the concept of virtual (or mental) reality is as old as the world.
I remember how happy I was when I read in the Strugatsky brothers’ fairy tale “Monday Begins on Saturday” this partly humorous statement: “... there really is a world in which Anna Karenina, Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, Grigory Melekhov and even Captain Nemo live and act. This world has its own very curious properties and patterns, and the people who inhabit it are all the more vibrant, real and individual, the more talented, passionate and truthfully the authors of the corresponding works described them.”
We are talking here, however, only about described a world of various possibilities. If you force yourself to think thoroughly about such concepts as “invariant” and “infinity”, then (based on the fact that infinity divided by infinity still remains infinity) you can imagine some kind of invariant of an infinite number of options - both imaginary, virtual, as well as that objectively existing one, which is “given to us in sensations.” This will be “alef, the center of all things.” By being here we mean not only the indicative, but also all possible - that is, infinitely many - subjunctive variants of the universe. All parallel worlds, all depictions of virtual paths of life development, as well as in general any possible (and impossible) fantasy are covered by the concept of “alef”. Only by admitting the existence of infinity can we explain the existence of what is given to us in sensations.
Art. Lem, in one of his “reviews of non-existent novels” very colorfully showed the improbability, or more precisely, the tendency towards zero probability of the existence of an individual: after all, in order for his parents to meet, a very long chain of accidents was required; and before that, the same chain of accidents preceded the acquaintance of the parents of both his parents, etc., etc. We can imagine the real existence of an infinite series of parallel worlds, the probability of which being in exactly the form that is inherent in them, each individually, is just as unlikely as ours. Moreover, time in these worlds can move in any direction and at any speed: perhaps in each of the living lives there lives “another person” living his life “counterclockwise”. Since the past does not disappear anywhere, we can walk through time in a different direction...
In the best works of art, one always feels the possibility of a way out, a breakthrough to true reality, and not that flat, apparent, imaginary one, about which Eduard Bagritsky wrote: “The stool is rough. The floor was killed by the sole.”
Speaking about poetry (and literature in general), one cannot ignore the question of its role in the life of society. Many authors believe that literature does not have any impact on society and public morality. But understanding this is by no means easy, especially in those countries where the writer has long been among the rulers of thoughts. It is, of course, a sad discovery, especially for a writer, to realize that “we are unable to give anything.” The only consolation is that it, like any extreme, cannot be completely true. Writers and poets influence society, although they do not in any way lead it - they influence society by making them think and feel.
I did not set myself the task of analyzing in any detail the selections of authors participating in our anthology. I just want to say that the reversal of 45, 54 gives a general idea of the directions of modern Russian-language poetry, albeit far from complete. The indisputable fact is that poetry in Russian is alive and developing.
Returning to the beginning of my notes, I cannot help but remember once again the name of Ray Bradbury. In 1947, he wrote the story “The Meadow,” where, in an extended metaphor, he presented the whole world as a wasteland on which sets for a variety of films had accumulated over the years. The watchman describes this place as follows:
“You united Boston and Trinidad, made it so that Trinidad rests on Lisbon, and Lisbon leans against Alexandria on one side, linked Alexandria and Shanghai together, put together Chattanooga and Oshkosh, Oslo and Sweetwater, Soissons and Beirut, Bombay and Port with nails and crutches. Arthur. A bullet hits a man in New York, he staggers, takes a step or two, and falls in Athens. In Chicago, politicians take bribes, and in London, someone is sent to prison... Everything is close, everything is so close to one another. We live here so closely that peace is simply necessary, otherwise everything will go to hell! One fire can destroy us all, no matter who starts it and why” (translated by Lev Zhdanov).
The world has become even smaller since then, and it seems to me that Bradbury’s metaphor is invisibly present in our anthology, it is scattered across the pages, uniting all authors and calling for moral responsibility for war crimes, for the struggle for world peace, against the revival of the ideology of national superiority. In our parallel reality, everything is too intertwined to allow someone to play with fire.
Actually, this is why we have gathered under one cover, as if at a round table: to take a closer look at each other, hear each other and understand. That’s why so many cities, both real and virtual, adorn our pages.
By building a single parallel reality, we adhere to the spirit and letter of the motto of the Forum of Creative Unions: “Unity of muses - unity of peoples.”
And finally, I would like to remind you of the many times quoted, but no less true, words of Evgeniy Vinokurov: “When Poetry exists, it may not be noticed by some people, but when it is not there, everyone begins to choke.”
Accent-45: Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of almanac-45 continues to receive responses to our projects. We are publishing some of them today - naturally, with the permission of the senders of the letters.
Opinions of participants in the online marathon and anthology
How important is this - such a representative - competition (more precisely, an Internet marathon) Secret pipes of the “45th parallel”, and the release of an anthology in his wake. The reader is presented with a cross-section, a representative selection of modern Russian-language poetry, and the geographical aspect here is no less significant than the purely poetic.
You, Sergey, are doing a great job - on the pages of your publication, a variety of authors, united by a high level of skill and a caring attitude to the pressing problems of our time, receive the “right to a poetic voice.” I am very glad to see among the winners the poets I already love, . I discovered something interesting for myself. The “45th Parallel” almanac works not only for the present, but also for the future. Someday, at the beginning of the 22nd century, our difficult era will be studied using it...
Moscow - Appalachia
Dear Sergey!
Sincerely grateful!
And personally to the chairman of the jury, and to the jury members!
I think the level of the competition is convincingly high. Shackled by “geographical boundaries,” as I understood them, I did not present a more diverse selection of poems, as some colleagues did. The more expensive it is to be noted!
Cologne
I'm looking at the PDF of the book now. 45: parallel real reality” - what a great fellow you are! So beautifully made, with taste and love. And the authors are wonderful. Everyone brings their own world. You dive in and don’t want to get out...
Philadelphia
Dear Sergey and members of the jury!
I followed the progress of the competition with great interest and growing excitement, discovering more and more wonderful authors. Competing with them seemed to me extremely risky, almost hopeless, but the results made me incredibly happy. I sincerely thank you for the honor given to me to discover my name among the names of talented poets living not only in Russia, but throughout the world.
Nalchik
I have been friends with the 45th parallel for a long time: both geographically and literaryly. Several collections, two anthologies (I think there were more), two years of work as a jury member of the 45 Caliber competition. Each project was unique for me and its uniqueness resembled a musical instrument: one was a violin, another was a drum, the third was the impatient trembling of a guitar. This fall it was the turn of the pipes. Pipes, as they should be due to their ancient origins, have a simple and accessible interface, but this does not mean that playing them is easier. Our online marathon managed to gather a whole bunch of strong authors. I won’t name everyone by name, I’ll just name my favorites: , . New selection - new world. And each of the worlds is wonderful. Allusions, hidden quotes - or deliberate simplicity? Social challenge - or tender femininity? Honestly, I would like to reward everyone - but what am I talking about? The muses have already awarded. And all I can do is congratulate and rejoice for my neighbor.
Yalta
* * *
Returned from a business trip. I opened the Internet, and there was the layout of the anthology with a very good, sincere, warm, heartfelt preface.
Respect! You really have collected the most interesting poets of our days under one cover! All the author's selections are made excellently: each of them is a real monologue of a creative soul, I would even say - a one-man show, in the best sense of these words.
I will not list the names - it will be a long list, but I will only say that many of them have grown to my heart. I was glad to see poems here, whom I really appreciate and who wrote the preface to my new collection “Tatiana’s Day”, Tatyana Vinogradova... I think this parallel reality is not accidental.
Thank you, Sergey! And separately - for the foreword - thanks to Georgy!
Good luck to you in all your affairs and endeavors! With respect and admiration,
The new collection is dedicated to one topic - quotes about nature and beauty. Ordinary people, as well as world-famous people, such as philosophers, reflect on this topic:
The higher the genius of the poet, the deeper and more extensively he understands nature and the more successfully he presents it to us in connection with life. Vissarion Belinsky
God is cunning, but not malicious. Nature hides its secrets by its inherent height, not by tricks. Albert Einstein.
Echo is nature's constant response to the questions we ask it. 
Perhaps God created the desert so that man would smile at the trees. Paulo Coelho.
Human! Raise your gaze from the earth to the sky - what an amazing order there is there! Kozma Prutkov
In nature, every phenomenon is a tangled ball; in society, every person is a pebble in a mosaic pattern. Both in the physical world and in the spiritual world everything is intertwined, there is nothing pure, nothing separate. Nicola Chamfort
Man as an individual, placed face to face with nature, is insignificant. Man as a race is powerful, and only the immutability of the laws of nature can be the limit for his self-lawful development. For him, as for a rational being, as having a consciousness of the laws of nature, there is nothing insubordinate in the universe, there is nothing supernatural, something that would not be contained in his nature and would not develop from it: he is for himself both a microcosm and a macrocosm. Mikhail Petrashevsky
In nature, nothing is lost except nature itself. Andrey Kryzhanovsky.
Moving away from the conditions of society and approaching nature, we involuntarily become children: everything acquired falls away from the soul, and it becomes like that again, 
as it once was and, most likely, will be someday again. Mikhail Lermontov.
A thing that exists in nature becomes much more beautiful if it resembles an object of art, but an object of art does not become truly beautiful by resembling a thing that exists in nature. Oscar Wilde.
Contact with nature is the very last word of all progress, science, reason, common sense, taste and excellent manners. Fedor Dostoevsky
Everything in nature is mutual. Who knows - in order for a person to take one step towards his moral ideal, shouldn’t the whole world move with him? Jean Guyot
The very spots and imperfections of nature are not without a certain benefit, introducing pleasant variety and elevating the beauty of the rest of the universe, just as shadows in a picture serve to highlight its clearer and lighter parts. George Berkeley
Whatever is done according to nature should be considered happy. Cicero Marcus Tullius.
There is always a reckoning in this world. There are two attorney generals: one is the one who stands at your door and punishes offenses against society, the other is nature itself. She knows all the vices that elude the laws. Denis Diderot
It is said that natural sciences have raised the strength of man and given him some unknown power. They, rather, reduced nature to man, made it possible to predict its pettiness, to predict that after proper investigation it would appear of the same order as human nature. Vladimir Vernadsky. 
Nature has given us a short life, but the memory of a well-lived life is eternal. Cicero Marcus Tullius
Every day nature itself reminds us how few, how small things it needs. Cicero Marcus Tullius
Nature must not have yet created a woman so ugly that she could remain completely indifferent to the praise given to her appearance. Philip Chesterfield.
The life of nature is continuous creativity, and although everything that is born in it dies, nothing perishes in it, is not destroyed, for death is birth. Nikolai Stankevich.
Nature has arranged it in such a way that it is common not only for madmen, but also for sages to harbor illusions: otherwise the latter would suffer too much from their own wisdom. Nicola Chamfort
Everyone wants to get back to nature - but on four wheels. Werner Min
Nature is simple and does not luxury with unnecessary reasons. Isaac Newton
A painter's painting will be less perfect if he takes the paintings of others as an inspiration; if he learns from the objects of nature, he will produce good fruit. Leonardo da Vinci. 
Nature submits only to those who submit to it. F. Bacon
Mosquitoes are the most active and free defenders of nature. V. Zubkov
Nature pleases, attracts and inspires only because it is natural. Wilhelm Humboldt
We cannot expect favors from nature after everything we have done to it. Victor Konyakhin
Nature is never mistaken... Nature hates any counterfeit, and the best thing is that which is not distorted by either science or art. Erasmus of Rotterdam
We must not invent, not invent, but look for what nature creates and brings. Francis Bacon
Nature does not accept jokes; she is always truthful, always serious, always strict; she is always right; mistakes and delusions come from people. Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Ignorance of nature is the root of those unknown forces before which the human race has trembled for so long, and of those superstitious creeds that have been the source of all its disasters. Paul Holbach.
Nature intended to make woman the pinnacle of creation, but she made a mistake with clay and chose too soft one. G. Lessing. 
But why change the processes of nature? There may be a deeper philosophy than we have ever dreamed of - a philosophy that reveals the secrets of nature, but does not change its course by penetrating it. Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
Nature can do everything and creates everything. Michel Montaigne.
Custom could not overcome nature - for it always remains undefeated. Cicero Marcus Tullius.
Nature has endowed man with the desire to discover the truth. Cicero Marcus Tullius.
There is nothing more inventive than nature. Cicero Marcus Tullius.
Nature knows no stop in its movement and punishes all inactivity. Johann Goethe.
Our callousness, our selfishness prompt us to look at nature with envy, but she herself will envy us when we recover from our illnesses. Ralph Emerson.
Nature does not tolerate inaccuracies and does not forgive mistakes. Ralph Emerson.
We want not only to know how nature works (and how natural phenomena occur), but also, if possible, to achieve a goal, perhaps utopian and daring in appearance, - to find out why nature is exactly the way it is and not another. This is where scientists find their greatest satisfaction. Albert Einstein
Nature never makes mistakes; if she gives birth to a fool, it means she wants it. G. Shaw. 
He who does not love nature does not love man, is not a citizen. Fedor Dostoevsky.
Nature is like a woman who, showing from under her clothes first one part of her body, then another, gives persistent admirers some hope of recognizing her all someday. Denis Diderot.
When nature leaves a hole in someone's mind, it usually covers it up with a thick layer of self-righteousness. G. Longfellow.
Nature gave birth and created us for some bigger (more significant) things. Cicero Marcus Tullius.
Both in nature and in the state: it is easier to change many things at once than just one thing. Francis Bacon.
Nature was created in order to emancipate us in conspiracy with the spirit. Ralph Emerson.
From year to year the earth sheds its crimson attire. Tibullus Albin.
Nature is, in a sense, its own physician, and in its natural activity lies that natural method of treatment, thanks to which the inappropriate is eliminated, and the expedient remains. Ludwig Buchner.
If nature is matter striving to become a soul, then art is the soul expressing itself in the material. Oscar Wilde.
Nature... awakens in us the need for love. Ivan Turgenev. 
Great things are done with great means. Nature alone does great things for nothing. Alexander Herzen.
Nature can only be defeated by obeying its laws. Francis Bacon
All nature strives for self-preservation. Cicero Marcus Tullius.
The most beautiful thing in nature is the absence of humans. Bliss Pocket.
We all sooner or later come to the conclusion that if there is something natural and rational in nature, then we came up with it ourselves. Aldous Huxley
A person has a strong unconscious desire for nature (the only path of his life); So strong is this desire that man does not hesitate to use pathetic parodies of nature - gardens and even indoor plants. Nicholas Roerich
In everything that in nature rejoices in its grace, abounds in fertility and shines with beauty, love is manifested, but the mark of its violation is carried by that which is exhausted from lethargy, pallor, weakness and the proximity of death. Lorenzo Pisano.
The craving for rural life and the desire to get out into nature are especially widespread in countries with a bad climate. Aldous Huxley
It is in the nature of rational beings to feel their imperfections; that's why nature gave it 
we feel modesty, that is, a feeling of shame in front of these imperfections. Charles Montesquieu
Established by nature itself. Seneca Aucius Annaeus (Younger)
There is nothing useless in nature. Michel Montaigne.
Man will not become master of nature until he has become master of himself. Georg Hegel.
There is nothing in the world that is done against the laws of nature. That which contradicts the laws of nature is false. Mikael Nalbandyan.
Man, not being clothed with beneficent nature, received from above the gift of tailoring. Kozma Prutkov
Disease is a healing agent of nature itself with the aim of eliminating disorder in the body; therefore, medicine comes only to the aid of the healing power of nature. Arthur Schopenhauer.
What is truth? The correspondence of our judgments to the creatures of nature. Denis Diderot.
I adore nature. - And this after what she did to you? Faina Ranevskaya.
These wonderful beautiful sayings, quotes about nature and beauty, show what the beauty of the world around us is.
