Quotes from Leonid Andreyev

My loneliness is very great. I am not in need of friends, but I must speak of Myself and I have no one to speak to.

What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it.

Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.

It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw Life, on the other side—Death,—like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.

Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.

I do not like Christians. They shake the tree of life, forbidding it to bear fruit, and they scatter to the wind it's fragrant blossoms.

He did not dissociate his thought from himself; he thought integrally, with the whole of his body; and each logical deduction forthwith became real to him—as happens only with very healthy or direct persons who have not yet turned thought into a pastime.

But there is no calm soul in Russia.

Death stationed itself in the corner and would not go away. It would not go away because it was my thought. It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it: it would be utterly impossible to live if a man could know exactly and definitely the day and hour of his death.

Everything in life was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well.

Either you are all asses, or I am an ass," he would declare seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: "You are an ass. We can tell by your voice.

But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities.

And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time.

Life and Death moved simultaneously, and until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid trifles.

It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness.

Rome fell silently to ruins. A New city rose in its place, and it was too erased by emptiness. Like phantom Giants, cities, kingdoms, and countries swiftly fell and disappeared into emptiness-- swallowed up in the black maw of the Infinite

Ik voel me zo vrij alsof ik niet ben opgesloten, maar zojuist ben bevrijd uit de gevangenis van mij leven.

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

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