#russian

But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#romances #russian-literature #life

I wish I wasn't an imperial highness or an ex-grand duchess. I'm sick of people doing things to me because of what I am. Girl-in-white-dress. Short-one-with-fringe. Daughter-of-the-tsar. Child-of-the-ex-tyrant. I want people to look and see me, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, not the caboose on a train of grand duchesses. Someday, I promise myself, no one will be able to hear my name or look at my picture and suppose they know all about me. Someday I will do something bigger than what I am. ↗

— Sarah Miller

#inspirational #life #otma #romanovs #royalty

Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked. ↗

— George Orwell

#orwell #russian-revolution #satire #satire

We just kind saw the images and knew the cliches, so to have the opportunity to go there and learn something about Russian music and about Russian people and to see things apart from being a tourist. ↗

— Marc Almond

#apart #being #cliches #go #images

The dramatic wish of Romanians at the end of the Second World War was to be occupied by the Americans and not by the Russians. ↗

— Traian Basescu

#end #occupied #russians #second #second world war

So you had to rev your engines, to beat the Russians and I think more than anything, if the Soviet team would win, or the Soviet athletes would win, you would see and hear and read about that. Quite frequently. So they would make a big issue of it. ↗

— Ralph Boston

#anything #athletes #beat #big #big issue

We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. ↗

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

#intervene #knowingly #probability #push #russians

If all Europe lies flat while the Russian mob tramps over it, we will then be faced with a war under difficult circumstances, and with a very good chance of losing it. ↗

— James Forrestal

#circumstances #difficult #difficult circumstances #europe #faced

There is nobody I know by name who is concerned with collecting information for the Russian authorities. There are people whom I know by sight whom I trusted with my life. ↗

— Klaus Fuchs

#collecting #concerned #i #information #know

If Russians knew how to read, they would write me off. ↗

— Catherine the Great

#knew #me #off #read #russians