Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Opportunity
-
Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.
→ -
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
→ -
Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday. Look around you - there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear.
→ -
And keep as few things as possible, so that you don't have to fear for them. Give them up without a struggle-because otherwise the humiliation will poison your heart. They will take them away from you in a fight, and trying to hold onto your property will only leave you with a bloodied mouth ... But by owning things and trembling about their fate aren't you forfeiting the rare opportunity of observing and understanding?
→
Related Authors
-
Joseph Stalin Former Premier of the Soviet Union -
Nikolai Gogol Dramatist -
Joseph Brodsky Poet -
Andrei Sakharov Nuclear Physicist, Human Rights Activist -
Mikhail Bulgakov Writer -
Anna Akhmatova Poet -
Milan Kundera Writer -
Ivan Turgenev Novelist -
Vladimir Voinovich Writer -
Ivan Bunin Writer -
Vladimir Nabokov Novelist -
Varlam Shalamov Writer -
Boris Pasternak Poet -
Maxim Gorky Writer -
Alexander Pushkin Author -
Fyodor Dostoevsky Novelist -
Alexander Ostrovsky Playwright -
Leo Tolstoy Writer -
Nikita Khrushchev Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -
Mikhail Lermontov Writer