Quotes by Vasily Klyuchevsky

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The surest and probably the only way to become happy is to imagine yourself this way.

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As artists, as a result of permanent contact with art, the aesthetic sense decreases, being replaced by the aesthetic measure.

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Labor is more valued when capital is cheap. Mind is more valued and power is cheapened.

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The triumph of historical criticism: from what the people of a certain period say, to be able to hear what is kept silent.

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Only in mathematics two halves make a whole, in life everything is different: for example, a crazy husband and a crazy wife are certainly two halves, but put together, they are two crazy people, and they will never represent a smart whole.

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Tears from the theater make you unaccustomed to everyday tears.

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The secret of the art of writing is knowing how to be the first reader of your own work.

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Happiness is not a reality, but only a memory: our past years seem happy to us, when we could live better than we lived, and when life was better than it seems to us in a moment of memory.

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Happiness does not lie in living well, but in understanding and feeling what it would consist of.

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Happy is he who can love his wife as a mistress, and unhappy is he who allows his mistress to love him as a husband.

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Statistics is the science of making numbers think and understand when you can't.

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The vulgar mediocre statistical man has no need of religion, however difficult it may be for him. It is necessary only for very small or very large people: the former it elevates, and the latter it keeps high. Vulgar mediocre people need neither elevation, because they are too lazy to rise, nor support, because they have nowhere to fall.

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Sport has become a favorite subject of reflection and will soon become the only method of thought.

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Looking at how they believe in God, I really want to believe in the devil.

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Death is the greatest mathematician, because it solves all problems without any mistakes.

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How long do people need to understand the century they lived in? For three centuries. When will mankind understand the meaning of his life? Three thousand years after his death.

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The most invincible man is the one who is not afraid to look stupid.

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The most scoffing man is he who laughs at his own passions.

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With them, the thought does not attract the words, but it hardly catches up with them.

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The mind is extinguished by contradictions, but the heart is nourished by them. You can hate someone because he's a scoundrel, but you can die for him because he's your neighbor.

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To be a good teacher you have to love what you teach as much as you love those you teach.

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To be clear, an orator must be sincere.

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To defend the homeland from enemies, Peter devastated it more than any enemy.

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To warm Russia, they are ready to set it on fire.

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To be bad, you must learn to be good; otherwise you'll just be disgusting.

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We summoned a foreign mind from Western Europe to teach us to live by our own mind, and we tried to replace it with our own mind.

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Egoists complain most of all about the selfishness of others, because they suffer the most from it.

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I am too old to grow old: only the young grow old.

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The man worked intelligently, kept working, and suddenly realized that he rotted worse than his work.

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Man is the biggest animal in the world.

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Knowing how to write legibly is the first rule of politeness.

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Scientific theories that have two opponents and no readers.

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Fanaticism is ready to generate anarchy in the name of order.

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Character is power over oneself, talent is power over others.

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A good woman, getting married, promises happiness, a bad woman - waits for it.

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To wish to be someone other than yourself is to wish to become nobody.

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Christs appear rarely, like a comet, but Judases are as many as mosquitoes.

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Famous gypsies are famous only abroad, because they have no homeland.

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Peter I was ready to disturb any kind of order to prevent disorder.

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Writers, like parents, like to endow their characters with qualities they themselves lack. That is why Maupassant's characters are always stupid, and Tolstoy's - intelligent.

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Freedom of conscience usually means freedom from conscience.

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Behind strong passions is often hidden only a weak will.

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Folk art has value not because of the benefits it brings, but because of the harms it avoids, providing a less crass pleasure.

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Why is piety required of the priest, while the doctor, treating others, is not obliged to be healthy?

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Sincerity is not credibility, just the bad habit of thinking out loud.

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She is looking for her husband in every man, because she has not found a man in her husband.

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He's stupid because he's so handsome, and he wouldn't be so handsome if he were less stupid.

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Ritual is a religious ash: it protects the rest of the religious pyre from the cold of life outside.

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Nothing is more useless than judging or treating corpses: they must be buried.

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Some women are smarter than other stupid ones, only because they realize their own stupidity. The difference between one and the other lies in the fact that some consider themselves intelligent, remaining stupid, and others recognize themselves as stupid, thus not becoming intelligent.

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Don't start a business whose outcome is out of your hands.

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Let's not confuse the theater with the church, because it is more difficult to turn a circus into a church than to turn a church into a circus.

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Our sympathy with the religious ancients is not moral, but only artistic: we only admire their sentiments, not sharing them, as lascivious old men admire young maidens whom they are unable to love.

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Once, a living source of happiness was seen in woman, because of which physical pleasure was forgotten, and in her a physiological device for physical pleasure was seen, because of which happiness was forgotten.

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Once, the face was valued and the body was hidden, now the body is valued, and the face is indifferent to us.

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The smartest thing in life, however, is death, because only it corrects all the mistakes and follies of life.

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The Russian clergy have always taught their flock not to know and love God, but only to fear the devils, whom he gave birth to, together with their priestesses.

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The Russian mind manifests itself most clearly in nonsense.

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A Russian from the people - Orthodox - lives his faith as a service to the church, which was imposed on him for the salvation of someone's soul, but not his own soul, which he neither learned nor wanted to save. No matter how much you pray, the devil will still take his part. That is his whole theology.

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The Russian intelligentsia will soon find itself in the position of a candy seller in front of hungry people.

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Shy, but not a coward.

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The novelist who paints the souls of others, paints his own soul; the psychologist who observes his own soul thinks he is studying the souls of others.

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The Roman emperors went mad with autocracy; why not drive the emperor Paul mad as well?

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The difference between the clergy and other Russian states: here there are many alcoholics, beyond there are few sober ones.

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A thinking man has only himself to fear, for he must be his only merciless judge.

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The direct path is the shortest distance between two troubles.

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The past must be known not because it passed, but because, passing, it did not know how to eliminate its consequences.

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The prologue of the 20th century is the powder factory. The epilogue is a Red Cross hut.

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The habits of the parents, both good and bad, turn into the children's vices.

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A conceited man is one who cares more about other people's opinions about him than his own opinion. To be conceited is to love yourself more than others, and to respect others more than yourself.

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Our history follows our calendar: every century, we fall one day behind the rest of the world.

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Science is often confused with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not only knowledge, but also a consciousness, namely the ability to use knowledge properly.

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Teachers are given the opportunity not to put your own thinking to sleep, but to awaken someone else's thinking.

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Music is a sound composition that gives us an appetite for life, just as well-known pharmaceutical compositions give us an appetite for food.

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We are inferior organisms in universal zoology: we continue to move even after we have lost our heads.

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One must find meaning even in nonsense: this is the unpleasant obligation of the historian, in a clever thing any philosopher can find meaning.

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Sowers talk so intelligently about the foundation of their lives that it seems what they are standing on is smarter than what they are talking about.

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The reproach that we are not understood often comes from the fact that we ourselves do not understand people.

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Women forgive everything, with one exception: bad behavior.

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Men marry hopes, women marry promises.

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The legitimacy of historical events is inversely proportional to their spirituality.

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A sane and sane man carves the Venus de Milo after his Akulina, and sees in the Venus de Milo nothing more than his Akulina.

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Both the Muscovite and the Ukrainian are cunning people, and the cunning of both is expressed through pretense. But both pretend in their own way: one likes to pretend to be stupid, the other to pretend to be smart.

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Sometimes it is necessary to break a rule in order to save its power.

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Art is a substitute for life, because art is loved by those who have failed in life.

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The real purpose of charity is not to do good, but to have no one left to do good.

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Out of a hundred witty people, one is clever.

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There are women that no one falls in love with, but that everyone loves. There are women that everyone falls in love with, but no one loves. Happy is only that woman whom all love, but with whom only one man is in love.

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To live is to be loved. He or she lived - means only one thing: he or she was much loved or loved.

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Do as I say, but don't say as I do - this is a form of corrected Jesuitism.

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A detailed study of certain organs allows you to understand the life of the whole organism.

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The good done by an enemy is as hard to forget as the good done by a friend is hard to remember. For good, we pay good only to an enemy; but for evil, we take revenge on both enemy and friend.

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A good man is not one who knows how to do good, but one who does not know how to do evil.

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Friendship can exist without love, but love without friendship does not exist.

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Friendship is usually a transition from mere acquaintance to enmity.

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There are two types of talkers: some talk too much to say nothing, others talk just as much because they don't know what to say. Some talk to hide what they believe, others - to hide that they don't believe anything.

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There are two kinds of fools: some do not understand what they are all bound to understand; others understand what no one needs to understand.

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History is wise after the event. He sees the present from behind, and not from the front. The historian has plenty of memories and examples, but he has neither intuition nor premonitions.

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History does not teach us anything, it only punishes for unlearned lessons.

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The man listens with his ears, and the woman with her eyes, the first to understand what is said to him, the second to please the one who speaks to him.

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People live idolatrously towards ideals, and when they lack ideals, they idealize idols.

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Conceited men love power, ambitious men love influence, conceited men seek both, thoughtful men despise both.

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You can bow to people who believe in Russia, but not to the object of their faith.

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Man sees in every woman what he wants to make of her, and usually he makes of her something she does not want to be.

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The man behaves with the woman like a chemist with his laboratory: he observes in her processes that are difficult for him to understand, but which he himself generates.

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The man loves the woman, most often, because she also loves him; the woman loves the man, most often, because he admires her.

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The man loves the woman, as much as he can love; the woman loves the man as much as she wants to love him. That is why the man usually loves the woman more than she deserves, and the woman wants to love more men than she is capable of loving.

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Men usually love women they respect; a woman usually respects only the men she loves. That's why man often loves women who don't deserve to be loved, and woman often respects men who don't deserve to be respected.

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The man falls to his knees in front of a woman, only to help her fall.

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Woman's love gives man momentary pleasures and harnesses him to eternal obligations, or at least to lifelong troubles.

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In admiration of how reform transformed Russia's past, I lost sight of how Russia's past transformed reform.

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How can she not be smart, if her whole life is taking care of such fools.

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When an actor does not understand who he is playing, he is involuntarily playing himself.

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When people want a fight but don't expect it, it doesn't happen; when they expect it, but want no quarrel, it will happen without fail.

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Some women who are beautiful in their old age are very stupid for the simple fact that they were very beautiful in their youth.

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Strong words cannot be strong evidence.

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A great success consists of many details planned and thought out.

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He who, being a man, despises men, must also despise himself, because only animals have the right to despise men.

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He who has friends who hate each other deserves their common hatred.

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He who laughs does not get angry, because to laugh means to forgive.

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In Russia there are no mediocre talents, simple craftsmen, but lonely geniuses and millions of underachievers. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and millions can do nothing because they have no masters. The former are useless, because they are too few; the latter are powerless, because there are too many of them.

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None of them will fall in love with the man whom all women love.

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In history, we learn more about facts, and understand less about the meaning of phenomena

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In the life of a scientist and a writer, the main biographical facts are books, the most important events are thoughts.

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At fifty you must have a hat and two ties, one white and one black: you will have to marry often and go to funerals.

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Being neighbors does not mean being close.

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A heart as it were, that sadness is found.

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Most people die peacefully, because as little as they understand what is happening to them at that moment, just as little did they understand what happened to them up until that moment.

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In Russia, the center is on the periphery.

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Do the clergy believe in God? The clergy do not understand this question because they serve God.

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The worst thing is to realize that you are an addition to your own furniture.

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It is much easier to become smart than to stop being stupid.

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Stupidity is an overpriced luxury that only rich people can afford.

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The eyes are not the mirror of the soul, but its windows seen in the mirror: through them, the soul sees a street, but the street also sees the soul.

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Hygiene teaches how to be a watchdog of your own health.

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Ladies only discover their minds when they snap out of them.

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The highest level of the art of speaking is the ability to be silent.

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We can be proud of anything, even the lack of pride, just as anything can fool us, even our own mind.

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A newspaper teaches the reader to think about what he does not know and to know what he does not understand.

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There are people whose only merit is doing nothing.

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A person who loves himself very much is not loved by others, because out of tact they do not want to become his rivals.

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There are people who become animals as soon as they are treated like people.