64 Quotes by Leonid Andreyev

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

But in the dark everything was unnatural; the silence and the darkness were in themselves something like death.

But there is no calm soul in Russia.

But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue.

The truth of life stands aghast in silence, and its brazen falsehood is loudly shouting, uttering pressing, painful questions: “With whom shall I sympathize? Whom shall I trust? Whom shall I love?

The curtain which through eternity has hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet they remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue.

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.

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

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