In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday, and a fire is an entertainment. A scratch embellishes an empty face.
— My Childhood
Maxim Gorky, born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, was a Russian and Soviet writer, journalist and proponent of socialism, nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author he travelled widely across the Russian Empire and changed jobs often, experiences that later shaped his writing. He associated with Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, both of whom appear in his memoirs.
He was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time worked closely with the Bolshevik wing of Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov. During World War I he supported pacifism, internationalism and anti-war protests. Mother and My Childhood are among his most quoted works in our library.
He was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time worked closely with the Bolshevik wing of Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov. During World War I he supported pacifism, internationalism and anti-war protests. Mother and My Childhood are among his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- Mother 4
- My Childhood 2
- Twenty-Six Men and a Girl and Other Stories 2
- Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture, and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918 2
Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.
— Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture, and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
— The Lower Depths, And Other Plays
The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
— Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture, and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918
Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future
— Twenty-Six Men and a Girl and Other Stories
Those——"—here he flung out a terrible oath—"those people don't know what their blind hands are sowing. They will know when our power is complete and we begin to mow down their cursed grass. They'll know it then!
— Mother
The illness of a doctor is always worse than the illnesses of his patients. The patients only feel, but the doctor, as well as feeling, has a pretty good idea of the destructive effect of the disease on his constitution. This is a case in which knowledge brings death nearer.
— Literary Portraits
The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.
— Twenty-Six Men and a Girl and Other Stories
we people at the bottom feel everything; but it is hard for us to speak out our hearts. our thoughts float about in us. we are ashamed because, although we understand, we are not able to express them; an often from shame we are angry at our thoughts, and at those who inspire them. we drive them away from ourselves
— Mother
In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which various simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.
— My Childhood