#russia

Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only. ↗

— Agnes Smedley

#imagination #much #only #read #russia

Business in Russia was not being done like in the West, with contracts. In Russia, hundreds of millions of dollars were going forward and backward by word of mouth. ↗

— David Reuben

#being #being done #business #contracts #dollars

I do recall hearing a conversation in our home in Strausberg, between my mother and my father, where my mother sounded very angry that my cousin had let the Rödels down by having to be dragged out of Oma’s house, crying for his mother and shouting that he did not want to return to the war in Russia. Like a great many other soldiers throughout that period, he died in Russia on 5 May, 1944. He was just twenty years of age, and is buried somewhere in that country. ↗

— Alfred Nestor

#alfred-nestor #author-alfred-nestor #hitler #hitler-s-germany #nazi-party

A chestnut-haired child Cheering up, went and stood in his stall. And took the whole incident like a young colt - and to live seemed worthwhile, and to labor, worthy. ↗

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

#russian-poetry #attitude

If you prefer, I'll be pure raging meat, or if you prefer, as the sky changes tone, I'll be absolutely tender, not a man, but a cloud in trousers! ↗

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

#russian-poetry #change

In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#russia #satire #satire

Whether one showed you and execution or a little finger, you would extract something equally edifying and then move on. That's how to get on in life. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#equality

On the Russian revolutionaries: To leave your parents, faithful and loyal subjects of the Emperor, to leave your profession, to desist from having children, to lose your fortune, and to give up your civil honor, all for revolutionary conviction, makes for a league of more practical proof than any religious order. ↗

— Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

#russian #sacrifice #faith

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war. ↗

— David Benioff

#history #inspirational #jewish #jews #pessimism

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight. ↗

— Marina Tsvetaeva

#russian-poetry #tsvetaeva #wisdom #freedom