#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

The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets. ↗

— Alfred Nestor

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

But then he touched the flowers With the dry tips of his fingers. "Tell me how men kiss you. Tell me how you kiss. ↗

— Anna Akhmatova

#the-guest #the-visitor #men

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

Beslan, where the Russian authorities stopped live coverage of the school being stormed, was an illustration of the progress we still have to make. ↗

— Kate Adie

#being #coverage #illustration #live #make

Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional ↗

— Russian

#mental-health #russians #truth #ussr #mental-health

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say. ↗

— Richard M. Nixon

#glad #i #know #kremlin #leader

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education. ↗