Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward (1968)

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Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the Universal spirit.Don't you feel that?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
What is an optimist? The man who says, "It's worse everywhere else. We're better off than the rest of the world. We've been lucky." He is happy with things as they are and he doesn't torment himself. What is a pessimist? The man who says, "Things are fine everywhere but here. Everyone else is better off than we are. We're the only ones who've had a bad break." He torments himself continually.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
After all, man is a complicated being, why should he be explainable by logic?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We are so attached to the earth, and yet we are incapable of holding onto it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Only a magician can fix a head on a body, but any fool can lop it off.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nowadays we don't think much of a man's love for an animal; we laugh at people who are attached to cats. But if we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Surely people should eventually cease to be surprised at anything? And yet they continue to be.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
When you're young, you haven't the experience, when you're old you haven't the strength.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn