Quotes by Mihail Sadoveanu

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The word is a means of communication of ideas and feelings. By breaking the logical connection of speech, you announce a pathological condition, if you are sincere, and a great intellectual poverty, if you are an imitator.

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We have to distinguish where the border is between art and pathological manifestations, with their exaggerations that lead to the absurd. Admitting any boldness in the domain of poetry as versification and syntactic renewal, it is clearly necessary to reject verbal anarchy...

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Between calamities and catastrophes, noble people who are no longer give accumulated strength in their works to fight for truth, social justice and peace.

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In these sacred urns, in which poets and thinkers have enclosed their hearts, we find that deathless power which moves humanity forward in its ceaseless progress...

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The book accomplishes not only the wonder of bringing us into contact with our fellows far apart in time and space: the book accomplishes the wonder of making us live apart from lies, injustice, and prejudice.

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We are not of those who are afraid of new things, because progress is a general law in all manifestations of life. We value novelty especially in art, because the original part that the artist brings is his most important title...

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Undoubtedly, our tradition has its foundations. Western literatures emerged from something else; from a certain spiritual and social order came ours.

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The work of any writer carries within itself the unsuspected power or the seeds of decay, and nothing can be worked for or against it. Now or later justice is done.

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The whole nation may perish, with its deeds of heroism, with its language and beliefs, with its sacrifices and ideals. Nothing may remain of it, like a sign written in the sand of the desert. Only the word of a great poet can be destined to endure in future ages, and to the holy song of his pain and joy can be linked the joys and sorrows of the deepest future generations, in other ages and in other civilizations. And the memory of the nation and the land that gave birth to him can be linked to his name.

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Forgetfulness is the cure for all pains on earth; but not all the souls of men are like the waters that are troubled, curled and tossed in a storm, and then calm down and spread a clear luster, as if for ever they had not stirred them. Sometimes fierce pains leave behind a leaven of poison.