“IN ORDER TO WARM RUSSIA, SOME ARE READY TO BURN IT” - V. KLUCHEVSKY
Thoughts, quotes, wise advice, aphorisms of one of the most outstanding Russian historians - Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky.
Academician, professor at Moscow University and the Moscow Theological Academy, founder of a scientific school and Privy Councilor wrote about the events and facts of Russian reality in a fascinating and accessible way. Historical portraits, diaries and aphorisms of the scientist - a brilliant master of words - reflect his thoughts about science, life, human virtues and shortcomings.
“In the life of a scientist and writer, the main biographical facts are books, the most important events are thoughts” - this is a statement by V.O. Klyuchevsky is confirmed by his whole life.
Klyuchevsky gained the reputation of a brilliant lecturer who knew how to capture the attention of the audience with the power of analysis, gift of image, and deep erudition. He shone with wit, aphorisms, and epigrams that are still in demand today. His works always caused controversy, in which he tried not to interfere. The topics of his works are extremely diverse: the situation of the peasantry, zemstvo councils of Ancient Rus', the reforms of Ivan the Terrible...
He was concerned about the history of the spiritual life of Russian society and its outstanding representatives. A number of articles and speeches by Klyuchevsky about S.M. relate to this topic. Solovyov, Pushkin, Lermontov, N.I. Novikov, Fonvizin, Catherine II, Peter the Great. He published a “Brief Guide to Russian History,” and in 1904 began publishing the full course. A total of 4 volumes were published, up to the time of Catherine II.
Klyuchevsky’s most famous scientific work, which has received worldwide recognition, is a Course of Russian History in 5 parts. The scientist worked on it for more than three decades.
The best aphorisms of Klyuchevsky
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Untalented people are usually the most demanding critics: not being able to do the simplest possible and not knowing what and how to do, they demand from others the completely impossible.
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Gratitude is not the right of the one who is thanked, but the duty of the one who thanks; demanding gratitude is stupidity; not to be grateful is meanness.
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Charity creates more needs than it eliminates needs.
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Being neighbors does not mean being close.
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To be happy means not wanting what you cannot get.
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At eighteen a man adores, at twenty he loves, at thirty he desires to possess, at forty he ponders.
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In science, you need to repeat lessons in order to remember them well; In morality, one must remember mistakes well so as not to repeat them.
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In Russia, the center is on the periphery.
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What you don’t know the senses about, what you don’t understand, then scold: this is the general rule of mediocrity.
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Do the clergy believe in God? It does not understand this issue because it serves God.
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From time to time, the poor get together, confiscate the property of the rich and begin to fight over the division of the spoils in order to get rich themselves.
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The entire life science of a woman consists of three ignorances: first, she does not know how to get a groom, then, how to deal with her husband, and finally, how to sell her children.
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When choosing a wife, you must remember that you are choosing a mother for your children, and as a guardian of your children, you must take care that a wife according to her husband’s taste is a mother after her children’s heart; Through the father, children should participate in the choice of the mother.
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A job undone is better than a job done wrong, because the former can be done, but the latter cannot be corrected.
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A good person is not one who knows how to do good, but one who does not know how to do evil.
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Friendship can do without love; love without friendship is not.
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There are people who become brutes as soon as they are treated like people.
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Women forgive everything, except for one thing - unpleasant treatment of themselves.
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Life is not about living, but about feeling that you are living.
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Life teaches only those who study it.
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Living with your own mind does not mean ignoring someone else’s mind, but being able to use it to understand things.
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A healthy and healthy person sculpts the Venus de Milo from his Akulina and does not see in the Venus de Milo anything more than his Akulina.
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The most interesting thing is to find out not what people talk about, but what they are silent about.
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The historian is strong in hindsight. He knows the present from the rear, not from the face. The historian has an abyss of memories and examples, but no instincts or premonitions.
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History teaches nothing, but only punishes for ignorance of the lessons.
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When we feel bad, we think: “But somewhere, someone is feeling good.” When we feel good, we rarely think: “Somewhere, someone is feeling bad.”
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Great writers are lanterns who, in peacetime, light the way for intelligent passers-by, who are defeated by scoundrels, and on whom the stupid ones are hanged in revolution.
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Whoever lives by someone else's labor will inevitably end up living by someone else's mind, for one's own mind is developed only with the help of one's own labor.
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He who does not like to ask does not like to oblige, that is, he is afraid to be grateful.
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Anyone who is unable to work 16 hours a day did not have the right to be born and must be eliminated from life as a usurper of existence.
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He who loves himself very much is not loved by others, because out of delicacy they do not want to be his rivals.
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He who laughs is not angry, because to laugh means to forgive.
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Proud people love power, ambitious people love influence, arrogant people seek both, reflective people despise both.
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Many small successes do not guarantee a big victory.
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Young people are like butterflies: they fly into the light and end up in the fire.
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A man loves a woman most often because she loves him; A woman loves a man most often because he admires her.
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Thought without morality is thoughtlessness, morality without thought is fanaticism.
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We should not complain that there are few smart people, but thank God that they exist.
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Finding the cause of evil is almost the same as finding a cure for it.
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Don't start something whose end is not in your hands.
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It is not old age itself that is respected, but the life lived. If she was.
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It is impossible and shameful to adopt someone else’s way of life, structure of feelings and order of relationships. Every decent people should have all this, just as every decent person should have his own head and his own wife.
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There is nothing more hostile to culture than civilization.
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Frankness is not gullibility at all, but only the bad habit of thinking out loud.
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By common sense, everyone means only their own.
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As you get older, your eyes move from your forehead to the back of your head: you begin to look back and see nothing ahead, that is, you live in memories, not hopes.
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If you sow care, you will reap initiative.
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The habits of fathers, both good and bad, turn into the vices of children.
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The difference between a brave man and a coward is that the first, aware of the danger, does not feel fear, and the second feels fear, not realizing the danger.
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The most fun laughter is to laugh at those who laugh at you.
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The most precious gift of nature is a cheerful, mocking and kind mind.
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The most invincible person is the one who is not afraid to be stupid.
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Family quarrels are a regular repair of decaying family love.
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The word is the great weapon of life.
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Looking at them, how they believe in God, you just want to believe in the devil.
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Justice is the valor of chosen natures, truthfulness is the duty of every decent person.
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Happy is the one who can love his wife as a mistress, and unhappy is the one who allows his mistress to love him as a husband.
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Talent is a spark of God with which a person usually burns himself, illuminating the path for others with his own fire.
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Creativity is a high feat, and feat requires sacrifice.
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Every age has its privileges and its disadvantages.
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A good doctor's medicine is not in the pharmacy, but in his own head.
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The mind perishes from contradictions, but the heart feeds on them.
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Being able to write legibly is the first rule of politeness.
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Character is power over oneself, talent is power over others.
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A good woman, when she gets married, promises happiness, a bad woman waits for it.
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It was the Germans who taught us exclusivity. Our goals are universal.
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To warm Russia, some are ready to burn it down.
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Aphorisms and quotes from Klyuchevsky
Atheists have been most mercifully granted the status of real state Christians.
Most people die calmly because they understand just as little what is happening to them at that moment, just as little they understood what they were doing before that moment.
If there was a heart, there would be sorrows.
Being neighbors does not mean being close.
The Roman emperors went mad with autocracy; Why shouldn’t Emperor Paul be fooled by him?
The novelist, depicting other people's souls, draws his own; a psychologist, observing his own soul, thinks that he is studying someone else's.
Timid, but not cowardly.
The Russian intelligentsia will soon feel like selling candy to hungry people.
The Russian commoner - the Orthodox - serves his faith as a church duty imposed on him to save someone’s soul, just not his own, which he has not learned to save, and does not want to. No matter how you pray, the devil will get it all. This is his whole theology.
The Russian mind shows itself most clearly in nonsense.
The Russian clergy has always taught their flock not to know and love God, but only to fear the devils, which they also bred with their priests.
The smartest thing in life is still death, for only it corrects all the mistakes and stupidities of life.
A proud person is one who values the opinions of others about himself more than his own. So, to be self-loving means to love yourself more than others, and to respect others more than yourself.
The surest and perhaps the only way to become happy is to imagine yourself like that.
The worst mocker is the one who ridicules his own hobbies.
The most invincible person is the one who is not afraid to be stupid.
Family quarrels are a regular repair of decaying family love.
They sit on bayonets, covering them with newspaper.
How long does it take for people to understand the century they have lived through? Three centuries. When will humanity understand the meaning of its life? 3 thousand years after his death.
Slavophilism is the story of two or three living rooms in Moscow and two or three cases in the Moscow police.
Voluptuousness is nothing more than power-hungry pride played out on female charms.
Death is the greatest mathematician, for he solves all problems without error.
Looking at them, how they believe in God, you just want to believe in the devil.
Sport is becoming a favorite subject of thought and will soon become the only method of thinking.
The average statistically vulgar person does not need, even difficult, religion. It is needed only by very small and very large people: it lifts the first, and supports the second at a height. Average vulgar people do not need either a lift, because they are too lazy to rise, or support, because they have nowhere to fall.
Old people are not born, but only die and, however, they are not all transferred.
Statistics is the science of how, without being able to think and understand, you can make numbers do it.
Scholasticism is the sharpening stone of scientific thinking: stones are not cut on it, but stones are sharpened against stones.
Happy is he who can love his wife as a mistress, and unhappy is he who allows his mistress to love him as a husband.
Happiness does not lie in living well, but in understanding and feeling what it might consist of.
Happiness is not reality, but only a memory: our past years seem happy to us, when we could live better than we lived, and lived better than we live in the moment of memories.
The secret of the art of writing is to be able to be the first reader of your work.
Theatrical tears wean one away from everyday ones.
Only in mathematics do two halves make one whole.
In life it’s not at all like that: for example, a crazy husband and a crazy wife are undoubtedly two halves, but in complexity they make two crazy people and will never make one completely smart person.
The triumph of historical criticism is to hear from what people of a certain time say what they were silent about.
Labor is more valuable when capital becomes cheaper. Intelligence is highly valued when strength becomes cheaper.
For artists, constant touching of art dulls their aesthetic sense, replacing it with an aesthetic eye.
Their thoughts do not lead their words, but have difficulty catching up with them.
The mind perishes from contradictions, but the heart feeds on them. You can hate a person as a scoundrel, or you can die for him as for your neighbor.
Being able to write legibly is the first rule of politeness.
Scholarly dissertations with two opponents and no readers.
Scientific publishers are sexual sciences that do not cook or eat, but only serve food.
Fanaticism in the name of order is ready to bring anarchy.
Character is power over oneself, talent is power over others.
He who laughs is not angry, because to laugh means to forgive.
A woman's love gives a man momentary pleasures and places on him eternal obligations, at least lifelong troubles.
While admiring how the reform transformed Russian antiquity, they failed to notice how Russian antiquity transformed the reform.
People live in idolatry of ideals, and when ideals are lacking, they idealize idols.
Proud people love power, ambitious people love influence, arrogant people seek both, reflective people despise both.
You can revere people who believed in Russia, but not the object of their belief. A man sees in any woman what he wants to make of her, and usually makes of her what she does not want to be.
A man deals with a woman like a chemist with his laboratory: he observes processes in her that are incomprehensible to him, which he himself produces.
A man loves a woman most often because she loves him; A woman loves a man most often because he admires her.
A man loves a woman as much as he can love; a woman loves a man as much as she wants to love. That is why a man usually loves one woman more than she is worth, and a woman wants to love more men than she is able to love.
A man usually loves women whom he respects; a woman usually respects only the men she loves. Therefore, a man often loves women who are not worth loving, and a woman often respects men who are not worth respecting.
A man falls to his knees in front of a woman only to help her fall.
A man listens with his ears, a woman with her eyes, the first - to understand what is being said to him, the second - to please the one who is talking to her.
Music is an acoustic composition that arouses in us an appetite for life, just as well-known pharmaceutical compositions arouse an appetite for food.
We are the lowest organisms in international zoology: we continue to move even after we lose our heads.
It is necessary to find meaning in nonsense: this is the unpleasant duty of a historian; every philosopher can find meaning in an intelligent task.
The populists reason so intelligently about the foundations of their lives that it seems that what they sit on is smarter than what they reason about.
Science is often confused with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not only knowledge, but also consciousness, i.e. the ability to use knowledge properly.
Our history follows our calendar: in each century we are one day behind the world.
Our sympathy for religious antiquity is not moral, but only artistic: we only admire its feelings without sharing them, just as voluptuous old men admire young girls without being able to love them.
Let us not confuse the theater with the church, for it is more difficult to turn a booth into a church than to turn a church into a booth.
Don't start something whose end is not in your hands.
Some women are smarter than other fools only because they are aware of their stupidity. The only difference between the two is that some consider themselves smart while remaining stupid; others recognize themselves as stupid without thereby becoming smart.
There is nothing more pointless than judging or treating corpses: they are only ordered to be buried.
Rite is religious ashes: it protects the remnant of religious heat from the external cold of life.
Rituals are honeycomb cells that everyone has covered with their feelings.
He is stupid because he is so handsome, and would not be so handsome if he were less stupid.
She looks for a husband in every man, because she has not found a man in a husband.
Frankness is not gullibility at all, but only the bad habit of thinking out loud.
Peter I was ready to disrupt any order to prevent disorder.
Writers, like parents, love to endow their children with properties that they themselves lack. That’s why Maupassant’s heroes are always stupid, while Tolstoy’s are always smart.
A rake needs more subtle understanding of people to seduce a woman than Bismarck needed to fool Europe.
By freedom of conscience we usually mean freedom from conscience.
Beneath strong passions there is often only a weak will hidden.
Popular art is valuable not for the benefit it brings, but for the harm it saves from by providing less crude entertainment.
Why is piety required of a clergyman, when a doctor is not required to be healthy himself when treating others?
Previously, a woman was seen as a living source of happiness, for the sake of which physical pleasure was forgotten; now they see in her a physiological device for physical pleasure, for the sake of which happiness is neglected.
Previously they valued the face and hid the body, now they value the body and are indifferent to the face. Previously, instinct, like a slave, was rude and rebellious, but was also subject to scourge; now it has become emancipated and is respected as the natural ruler of life.
Previously they were connected by at least the floor, but now only by the ceiling.
Teachers are given the floor not to lull their own thoughts, but to awaken someone else’s.
The habits of fathers, both good and bad, turn into the vices of children.
Prologue of the 20th century - gunpowder factory. Epilogue - Red Cross barracks.
You need to know the past not because it has passed, but because, when leaving, you did not know how to remove your consequences.
The straight path is the shortest distance between two troubles.
A reflective person should fear only himself, because he must be the only and merciless judge of himself.
The difference between the clergy and other Russian classes: there are many drunkards here, there are few sober ones there.
A good woman, when she gets married, promises happiness, a bad woman waits for it.
To want to be something other than oneself is to want to become nothing.
Christs rarely appear as comets, but Judas are not translated as mosquitoes.
Tsars are the same actors with the difference that in the theater the bourgeois and commoners play the kings, and in the palaces the tsars play the bourgeois and commoners.
Gypsies are famous - they are known only abroad, because they have no fatherland.
Man is the greatest beast in the world.
The man worked smartly, worked and suddenly felt that he had become stupider than his work.
A person, using reason, knows how to act unreasonably contrary to instinct.
To be a good teacher, you need to love what you teach and love those you teach.
To be clear, a speaker must be frank.
To protect the fatherland from enemies, Peter devastated it more than any enemy.
To warm Russia, they are ready to burn it.
To be able to be evil, you must learn to be kind; Otherwise you'll just be nasty.
The alien Western European mind was called upon by us to teach us to live with our own mind, but we tried to replace our mind with it.
Egoists complain the most about the selfishness of others, because they suffer the most from it.
I am too old to grow old: only the young grow old.
At the age of 50 you need to have a hat and two ties, white and black: you will often have to get married and buried.
In the life of a scientist and writer, the main biographical facts are books, the most important events are thoughts.
In history we learn more facts and understand less the meaning of phenomena.
Not one of them will fall in love with the man whom all women love.
In Russia there are no average talents, simple masters, but there are lonely geniuses and millions of worthless people. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and nothing can be done with millions because they have no masters. The first are useless because there are too few of them; the latter are helpless because there are too many of them.
In Russia, the center is on the periphery.
Do the clergy believe in God? It does not understand this issue because it serves God.
The worst thing is to consider yourself an addition to your own furniture.
You can be proud of everything, even the absence of pride, just as you can be stupefied by everything, even by your own mind.
The highest degree of the art of speaking is the ability to remain silent.
The newspaper teaches the reader to think about what he does not know and to know what he does not understand.
Hygiene teaches you how to be the guard of your own health.
The eyes are not the mirror of the soul, but its mirror windows: through them she sees the street, but the street sees the soul.
Stupidity is the most expensive luxury that only rich people can afford.
It is much easier to become smart than to stop being a fool.
The rudeness of Old Duma society is measured by the need to prove the material benefits of virtue.
Ladies only discover the presence of mind in themselves by often losing it.
Do what I say, but don't say what I do—revised Jesuitism.
A detailed study of individual organs makes it difficult to understand the life of the whole organism.
Good done by an enemy is just as difficult to forget as it is difficult to remember good done by a friend. For good we pay good only to the enemy; For evil we take revenge on both the enemy and the friend.
A good person is not one who knows how to do good, but one who does not know how to do evil.
Friendship can do without love; love without friendship is not.
Friendship usually serves as a transition from simple acquaintance to enmity.
Her refusal is more pleasant than any other consent.
There are two kinds of talkers: some talk too much to say nothing, others also talk too much, but because they don’t know what to say. Some people speak to hide what they think, others to hide the fact that they don’t think anything.
There are two kinds of fools: some do not understand what everyone must understand; others understand what no one should understand.
There are women with whom no one falls in love, but whom everyone loves. There are women with whom everyone falls in love, but whom no one loves. The only happy woman is the one whom everyone loves, but with whom only one is in love.
The complaint that we are not understood most often comes from the fact that we do not understand people.
Women forgive everything, except for one thing - unpleasant treatment of themselves.
They marry hopes, they marry promises.
To live is to be loved. He lived or she lived - this means only one thing: he or she was loved a lot.
The regularity of historical phenomena is inversely proportional to their spirituality.
A healthy and healthy person sculpts the Venus de Milo from his Akulina and does not see in the Venus de Milo anything more than his Akulina.
Both the Muscovite and the Little Russian are cunning people, and the cunning of both is expressed in pretense. But both pretend in their own way: the first likes to pretend to be a fool, and the second likes to pretend to be smart.
Out of 100 witty people, one is smart.
Sometimes it is necessary to break a rule to save its power.
Art is a surrogate for life, that’s why art is loved by those who have failed in life.
The true purpose of charity is not to do good, but to ensure that there is no one to do good.
The historian is strong in hindsight. He knows the present from the rear, not from the face. The historian has an abyss of memories and examples, but no instincts or premonitions.
History teaches nothing, but only punishes for ignorance of the lessons.
How can she not be smart, messing around with such fools all her life?
When an actor does not understand who he is playing, he inevitably plays himself.
When people, wanting a quarrel, do not expect it, it will not follow; when they wait for it without wanting it, it will certainly happen.
Beautiful women can be very stupid in old age only because they were very beautiful in their youth.
Strong words cannot be strong evidence.
Major success is made up of many planned and thoughtful little details.
Whoever despises people must despise himself, therefore only animals have the right to despise people.
He who has friends who hate each other deserves their common hatred.
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The historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (1841-1911) is not just a name. This is a symbolic name, which in the history of Russian science will always stand among the most glorious names and will always be pronounced with pride and admiration. Some anniversaries of Klyuchevsky are still a long way off, however, in my opinion, today there are plenty of reasons to turn to his scientific heritage.
In the portrait by Leonid Pasternak, the scientist is depicted giving lectures against the backdrop of a beautiful dark red assembly hall among statues and paintings. In the first row of listeners, the artist depicted his son, the future poet Boris Pasternak. “I am happy,” wrote Leonid Osipovich, “that I managed, by capturing the features of the brilliant Russian historian, to leave this artistic memory to our people. I dare to think that I fulfilled my duty to my homeland by painting this portrait.”
Among Klyuchevsky’s works, the most famous is the “Course of Russian History” in five parts, based on the materials of his many years of lectures. History, in the view of a scientist, is the science of the general laws of the structure of human societies. Previously, the decisive force of the historical process was considered to be the activities of individual reigning persons or the state. Klyuchevsky argued that the development of society depends on a combination of various factors - both external and internal: economic, political, social, geographical, ethnic.
The political ideal of Vasily Osipovich was a legal democratic state with suffrage, parliamentary government and peaceful cooperation of all classes based on the “common good”. The historian rejected the revolutionary upheavals of society. The state in his view is a reconciling national principle. In Soviet times, he was often called the leading historian of the bourgeois-liberal trend in Russian historiography, but this is not entirely true. Rather, Klyuchevsky was a very moderate Westerner, with a slight melancholy for Muscovite Rus'...
But today I want to remind you of something else. Klyuchevsky had a small elegant book with gold-edged pages, covered in black silk. In a free moment, he took it out and wrote down aphorisms that came to mind. He then read some aphorisms from the black book in classrooms, among friends and acquaintances, delighting all listeners. The themes of Klyuchevsky’s aphorisms are varied: from funny everyday observations, hilarious humorous jokes to the deepest generalizations, in which one can feel a restrained grin, bitter irony, and even outright sarcasm. Among them there are many purely entertaining statements, instructive and paradoxical. Each reader can find a saying to suit his taste, find his own pearl. From a huge number of aphorisms for this post, I have selected, in my subjective opinion, the best, most interesting. So…
The Tsarina's spring train on pilgrimage under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Artist V. G. Schwartz. 1868
The Tsarina's spring train on pilgrimage under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Artist V. G. Schwartz. 1868
1. The creators of social order usually become its instruments or victims, the first as soon as they stop creating it, the second as soon as they begin to remake it.
2. Republicans in monarchies are usually people who do not have a king in their own head; monarchists in republics are people who notice that others are losing it.
3. Science is often confused with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not only knowledge, but also consciousness, that is, the ability to use knowledge properly.
4. For now, we need autocracy as a spontaneous force, which with its spontaneity can restrain other spontaneous forces, even worse.
5. History is not a teacher, but an overseer, magistra vitae [teacher of life]: it teaches nothing, but only punishes for ignorance of the lessons.
6. A monarch who cannot stand on his own two feet cannot be an autocrat.
7. Velikorus is a historian by nature: he understands his past better than his future; he will not always guess what needs to be provided, but he will always understand that he did not guess.
8. Christianity is a religion of love; everything is said here - both essence and history.
Wedding train in Moscow. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin. 1901
Wedding train in Moscow. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin. 1901
9. Old Russian worldview: do not touch the existing order, neither physical nor political, do not study it, but learn from it as the work of God.
10. Monarchies of old Europe: crowns without heads, governments without ministers, armies without generals; power without advice or sword, a bare skeleton, or rather, a ghost from the historical grave.
11. Catherine - only she managed to bring power closer to thought for a minute. Afterwards, as before, this meeting did not work out or those meeting did not recognize each other.
Petersburg at the beginning of the 18th century. Artist E. E. Lansere. 1906
Petersburg at the beginning of the 18th century. Artist E. E. Lansere. 1906
12. In Russia, all elements of culture are greenhouse, state-owned: everything, and even anarchy, is brought up and bred at the expense of the state.
13. People slave more to their past than work for the future.
14. Russia is on the edge of the abyss. Every minute is precious. Everyone feels this and asks questions: what to do? No answer.
15. The level of political development of a people is determined by political forms of life. We have developed a lower form of state, a fiefdom. This is actually not a form, but a surrogate for the state.
16. The subject of history is that in the past that does not pass away, like an inheritance, a lesson, an unfinished process, like an eternal law. By studying our grandfathers, we get to know our grandchildren, that is, by studying our ancestors, we get to know ourselves.
17. Every society has the right to demand from the authorities that it be satisfactorily governed, to say to its rulers: “Rule us so that we live comfortably.”
18. Russia has developed a special habit of new eras in one's life, a tendency to begin a new life at sunrise, forgetting that yesterday has sunk under the inevitable shadow.
19. The Russian Tsar has a stronger proofreader than him - a minister or secretary. The Tsar commands - the minister will cancel, as under Catherine II, with an order. He understands the will of the king better than the king himself.
20. I don’t know a society that was more patient, I won’t say more trusting, towards the government, just as I don’t know a government that wasted society’s patience as much as government money.
Peter I on a walk. Artist A. N. Benois. 1910
Peter I on a walk. Artist A. N. Benois. 1910
21. Peter’s activities were intertwined from the contradictions of autocratic tyranny and the state idea of the common good; only he could not reconcile these two principles, which would never make peace with each other.
22. From a large and neglected semi-Asian state, Peter made a European power, which became even larger than before, but larger and hated.
23. The government can neither educate nor corrupt the people: it can only arrange or frustrate them. The education of the people is the work of the ruling and educated classes, the intelligentsia.
24. Tsars are the same actors with the difference that in the theater the burghers and commoners play the kings, and in the palaces the tsars play the burghers and commoners.
25. Autocracy is not power, but a task, that is, not a right, but a responsibility. The task is for the individual government to do for the people’s good what the people themselves are unable to do through their own bodies.
26. The nobility are “loyal rebels.” It is accustomed to surround the throne with the ever-outstretched hand of a beggar and shake it for its intractability.
Capture of the Livonian fortress Kokenhausen by Ivan the Terrible. Artist P. P. Sokolov-Skalya. 1937–1943
Capture of the Livonian fortress Kokenhausen by Ivan the Terrible. Artist P. P. Sokolov-Skalya. 1937–1943
27. With heavy taxes, the state has inflated its forces, the importance is beyond measure and need, and has taken on tasks and difficulties beyond its strength. State of games and adventures.
28. The judgments of history are not the judgments of the civil chamber, which strengthened the dead souls behind Chichikov.
29. In contrast to the state order based on power and obedience, economic life is an area of personal freedom and personal initiative as an expression of free will.
30. In the history of Russian life there are so many untouched questions that to touch upon them will be the glory of those who only touch upon them, although not solve them.
