Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.

An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.

It’s making a statement about what life is, really. And I’m going to end the line with it.

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

Suffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it's all for.

I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us, but to be able to have that clarity of experience that changes us, so that we know who we are now because of who we have been at some other time.

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.

My life has been a quest for knowledge and understanding, and I am nowhere near having achieved that. And it doesn't bother me in the least. I will die without having come up with the answers to many things in life.

Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.

A reflection of an exact image is the closest thing to you-so that you can see it-but it's far enough away so that you really understand it. There is real life in this movie, but it hovers just an inch above reality.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

I like the big questions.

You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.

Knowledge is ancient error reflecting on its youth.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

We have discovered the secret of life.

I don't like sensationalizing events. Instead of making waves, I want to make everything settle, so we can see to the bottom of things.

Sometimes, some things have to settle, and you have to think about the intention of it.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Being is the great explainer.

Plato described ordinary life as unthinking, lived in a dim cave of shadowy reflections, but said that it is possible to leave the cave and see things in sunlit clarity as they actually are.

Seeing the Way is like going into a dark room with a torch; the darkness instantly departs, while the light alone remains. When the Way is attained and the truth is seen, ignorance vanishes and enlightenment abides forever.

All relationships are living and alive and moving and becoming something.