Taras Bulba Quotes
"The ancient Greeks, it has been said, were too reasonable to ignore the intoxicating power of the unreasonable."
"Explosions of passion—romantic and destructive, cruel and self-sacrificing, among nations as among individuals—not only are to be expected but are central to the human spirit."
"Tragedy, as the classicist Edith Hamilton once observed, is the beauty of intolerable truths."
"If realism is to be truly realistic, it must acknowledge the romantic and heroic impulses in human beings, in all their healthy and perverse forms."
"Violence is a way of life, an expression of joy and belief, unlinked to any strategic or tactical necessity."
"The crowd needs a direction... Its constant fear of disintegration means that it will accept any goal."
"There's no reasoning with a crowd, in other words: against the absolute faith of a Cossack horde, for example, the urban civilization of the Poles is nothing."
"The more advanced a civilization, the more cerebral and subtly conformist it is likely to be—and, consequently, the more extreme the pent-up frustration that becomes the source of spectacular violence."
"Meeting the challenge of the crowd-pack—indeed, even surviving as a society—requires a willingness to tap into the same dangerously elemental energies of raw passion."
"Europe, if it seeks to avoid decline, will have to relearn the lesson of Gogol and the ancient Greeks: that rational argument alone will never fully overcome those who simply and passionately believe."
"The farther they rode into the steppe, the more beautiful it became."
"At dusk the whole steppe changed. Its bright and colorful expanse was gripped by a last blazing gleam of sunlight."
"All the music that had sounded during the day fell silent, and then changed into another music."
"The night stars gazed straight down at them."
"Freedom and Cossackry had spilled over the whole Ukraine."
"The Cossacks made the tight kind of circle one finds among pupils in a schoolhouse."
"A man who came to the Sech cast off all that had preoccupied him."
"The voice of the people is the voice of God."
"This was the Sech, so attractive to the young men."
"They were fascinated by the wild ways of the Sech and the rough code of justice."
"A Cossack who can wait in calm patience will in time become Ataman."
"The future is unknown and lies before man like an autumn fog rising from the swamps."
"The air was fresh and clear. The Milky Way's thicket of stars, bursting with light, stretched like a sash across the sky."
"The longer he peered at her features the more he felt there was something familiar about them."
"Feelings of every kind flared up in the Cossack’s heart."
"You will not betray me, will you, young knight?"
"Once more the image of the proud young woman emerged before him as if from the dark depths of the ocean."
"But for the love of Christ and of Holy Mary, give me a piece of bread!"
"Pure feeling expressed itself in her raised eyes—not fragments or hints of feeling, but feeling at its fullest."
"A man’s native soil is what his heart seeks and what is most dear to it!"
"You were born to have men kneel before you as before a saint!"
"Shame upon those who are parading you like this without covering your nakedness!"
"What do I say? I say that lucky is the father who sired a son like Kukubenko!"
"The handsomest and most magnificent of face and pedigree would have been my husband."
"May every man, woman, and child spit on the graves of my father, my mother, my father-in-law, my father’s father, and my mother’s father if I am wrong!"
"But the moment you try to speak a word from the heart, well, there you have it: yes, they might be clever men, yet they are different! They might be men just like you and me, yet they are different!"
"To love as the Russian soul can love, not with the mind or whatever, but with everything that God has given us, with everything that is inside us—no, nobody else can love like that!"
"For a long time now I have begged God that, when my time came to die, I would meet death on the battlefield fighting for the true Christian faith."
"Glory to the Russian lands for all eternity!"
"I must find out! Is he alive? Is he in his grave? Or wasn't he even buried? I must find out!"
"I know, I know everything: there's two thousand gold ducats on my head! As if those fools know what my head is worth!"
"Oy, what magnificent money! Oy, what good money!"
"You think I can take you there just like that without even hiding you?"
"God put vodka on this earth for everyone to taste."
"Because everyone thinks a Jew is not a human being!"
"You look strong enough, so you won’t mind if it is a little heavy."
"An hour later, two mares pulled a cart loaded with bricks out of Uman."
"Locked in his tight cage, Bulba could see nothing; he only heard the din and the yells of the carters in the streets."
"There’s nothing on earth you Jews cannot do!"
"When man and God want to do something, then it will be done!"
"I am leaving nothing for the Poles, not even my pipe!"
"Is there fire, torture, or force powerful enough in all the world to subjugate the Russian spirit?"