Quotes from Leonid Andreyev

The papers are full of murders -- strange murders. It is all nonsense that there are as many brains as there are men; mankind has only one intellect, and it is beginning to get muddled.

Only the dead know the truth.

To succeed in life one needs two things -- influence and a lucky star.

Bread without love is like grass without salt -- the stomach may be filled, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It's a powerful instrument, dynamite -- nothing like it for a convincing argument!

I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.

When a woman weeps, it is a man's shame.

Do you not see the hand of God, which gives harmony, light, and love to the world? Do not the mountains, in the blue cloud of incense, sing their hymn of glory?

When a man has the rope about his neck, you don't ask him about his health!

Don't laugh at the voice of the stars. They are far away, their rays are light and pale, and we can barely see their sleeping shadows, but their sorcery is stern and dark.

The loss of reason in war seems to me honorable, like the death of a sentry at his post.

As we educate a child -- removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience -- we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence -- towards perfection.

Men are always murderers, and their calmness and generosity is the calmness of a well-fed animal, that knows itself out of danger.

Hitherto without being; hidden away in the womb of eternity; possessed neither of thought nor feeling; remote from the range of human ken -- the Man bursts, in some unknown manner, the bars of non-existence, and announces with a cry the beginning of his brief life. In the night of non-existence there bursts forth also a little candle, lit by an unseen hand. Mark well its flame: for it is the life of that Man.

Thus will we deal with life, my little help-meet. Will we not, eh? What though it blink at us like an owl that is blinded by the sun, we will yet force it to smile.

I cannot get accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and explain a thing that is senseless in its basis. Millions of people gather at one place and, giving their actions order and regularity, kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy -- what is it if not madness?

Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out.

You love humanity and I detest it. At best I am indifferent to it. Let it live and not interfere with me.

Yes, I do read books but only for one purpose: to learn how to hate man and to hold him in contempt.

He felt that in the eyes of the Infinite wisdom and folly are the same, for the Infinite knows them not.

I do not want to lie so rudely and ungracefully. I will lie to you elsewhere, when you least expect it, and that will be far more interesting for both of us.

I play because my loneliness is very great, very deep- I fear it has no bottom at all! I stand on the edge of an abyss and hurl words, many heavy words, into it, but they fall without a sound. I hurl into it laughter, threats and moans. I spit into it. I fling into it heaps of stones and rocks. I throw mountains into it- ant still it remains silent and empty.

No more did the frozen heart ache.

Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances.