Dmitri Quotes

I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

When I hear about someone else's pain, I feel pain too. i feel pain for everything - for people and animals. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

What galls me is that these sadists always have fans and followers-- and sincere ones at that. The typical example of this is Toscanini. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Sara held up a hand. 'How exactly did you "decline" his offer?'
'By slitting his throat. ~ Nalini Singh

That was the choice that Father Dmitri was given. As a Russian, he wanted to support Russia. As a Christian, he wanted to the oppose the Soviet Union. But, if he opposed the Soviet Union, he was allying with foreigners and thus fighting against Russia. He had to choose, therefore, between his religion and his country and he chose his country. That was how he himself justified his choice. ~ Oliver Bullough

You're holding a challenge in a fencing club?"

"Yes. Is there something wrong with that?" He pulled on his black pants and the heavy silk green shirt I loved for him to wear because the material seemed to caress hisskin.

No, it's just kind of an incongruous place to hold something so serious as a challenge, isn't it?"

He finished with his shoes, grabbed another towel, and shook it out for me. I made sure Pal still had his back to me, hurrying out of the pool to clasp the towel around me.

"It is no less incongruous than holding a challenge in a bar."

I smiled. "Yes, but my challenge to you wasn't serious. I hope you'll notice that I'm not freaking out about this at all. I haven't even asked you how good you are with asword."

"I noticed." His mouth burned on mine for a moment, his fire being shared between us as his tongue twined around mine in a fiery - albeit brief - dance. "You are learning to have faith in me as is proper between a mateand her wyvern."

"No, I am learning to ask around. Pal told me earlier today that Dmitri had picked swords and that you were pleased because you were some sort of master swordsman a few centuries ago. You'd better not have forgotten anything."

Pal peeked at me out of the corner of his eye, his grin not too obvious. Drake pinched my bare behind as punishment for my saucy tone. "I never forget. Istvan will drive you when you are ready. The challenge is not f ~ Katie MacAlister

Those who have ears to hear, will hear ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

After they were both done, the pile of knives and guns on the coffee table looked like they'd cleaned out an armory. I think we have a problem, Dmitri. ~ Nalini Singh

When the elements are arranged in vertical columns according to increasing atomic weight, so that the horizontal lines contain analogous elements again according to increasing atomic weight, an arrangement results from which several general conclusions may be drawn. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes - as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden.
[Upon hearing the Periodic Table explained in a first-tern university lecture.] ~ C.P. Snow

Just what does a virgin wife have to do to get debauched? Teena really wanted to know. Offering herself hadn't worked. Telling her husband he would be her one and only seemed to set off a state of panic. Would she have to tie Dmitri down and have her way with him? ~ Eve Langlais

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Who cannot sympathize with the imprisoned Dmitri Karamazov as he tries to make sense of what he has just learned from a visiting academic?

"Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head - that is, these nerves are there in the brain ... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering ... that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails ... and when they quiver, then an image appears ... it doesn't appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes ... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment - devil take the moment! - but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That's why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all because I've got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It's magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man's arising - that I understand.... And yet I am sorry to lose God!"

Dostoevsky's prescience is itself astonishing, because in 1880 only the rudiments of neural functioning were understood, and a reasonable person could have doubted that all experience arises from quivering nerve tails. But no longer. One can say that the information-processing activity of the brain causes the mind, or one can say that it is the mind, but in either case the evidence is ov ~ Steven Pinker

While Dmitri, as the leader of Raphael's Seven, could not accept such a weakness, the mortal he'd once been, the one who had loved a woman with a wide mouth and eyes of slanted brown ... that man understood what it was to love so deeply it was a kind of beautiful madness. ~ Nalini Singh

Jonas stood from the bed and took two steps. He turned back and looked at Dmitri, who had stood behind him. "They're going to pay, Dmitri." Dmitri looked Jonas in the eye, took him by both shoulders, and said, "You wouldn't be from the House of Athena if you didn't make them pay." Jonas nodded and opened the door. ~ Erik Wecks

He swallowed again. "Why?"
When I opened my mouth to answer, my lips started trembling - from nerves or regret I don't know - and it took a few seconds to actually force the words out. "Because you have to find Nicholas. And I can't handle that right now. I know I said I could, but I can't." Breathing as deeply as I could, I took Daniel's closeness inside me, feeling all the while like I was on the edge of suffocating. "I'm about to fall apart, and I need time."
"I need you."
"You need me to kill-"
"No!" Daniel's face flushed, and he fixed his mouth shut, inhaling rapidly through his nose while trying to regain control. "You aren't going anywhere near Dmitri. Not ever. He's my responsibility. ~ Angela B. Wade

A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri was at a total loss. It was a common reaction for people when I agreed to do something reasonable. ~ Richelle Mead

If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Do you know where Jason is?" she asked Dmitri when they exited the morgue. Dmitri pressed the car remote to unlock the flame red Ferrari parked in the employees-only lot. "Tired of your Bluebell already?" A tendril of champagne circled around her senses, cut with something far harder. Never had she felt that harsh edge in Dmitri's scent. She pitied the woman he took to his bed today.
"Yeah, that's it. I'm building a harem. ~ Nalini Singh

I have achieved an inner freedom. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

We could live at the present day without a Plato, but a double number of Newtons is required to discover the secrets of nature, and to bring life into harmony with the laws of nature. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined towards friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything than himself and his music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When I saw you fall ... "
"You thought, 'Wow, she's a loser. ~ Richelle Mead

Когда рыжеволосый Самозванец
Тебя схватил - ты не согнула плеч.
Где спесь твоя, княгинюшка? - Румянец,
Красавица? - Разумница, - где речь?

Как Пётр-Царь, презрев закон сыновний,
Позарился на голову твою -
Боярыней Морозовой на дровнях
Ты отвечала Русскому Царю.

Не позабыли огненного пойла
Буонапарта хладные уста.
Не в первый раз в твоих соборах - стойла.
Всё вынесут кремлёвские бока.

9 декабря 1917



When the red-haired impostor, fell Dmitri,
laid hold of you, you did not bow the knee.
Where is your pride, my princess? - Where, my beauty?
The rosy cheeks? the voice once wise and free?

And when Tsar Peter, coveting your beauty,
made to ride roughshod over filial law -
Morozova showed you the path of duty:
she was your answer to the Russian Tsar.

And Bonaparte's cold lips cannot forget still
The fiery draught you set before him then.
Once more now your cathedrals serve for stables.
The Kremlin's flanks will soldier to the end. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

I write music, it's performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The truth is that the war helped. The war brought great sorrow and made life very very hard. Much sorrow, many tears. But it had been even harder before the war, because then everyone was alone in his sorrow. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Elena scowled - the day she let Dmitri give her orders was the day ice-skating became a regular activity in hell. ~ Nalini Singh

A flaw does not make a man worthless," Raphael had once said to Dmitri. "Else I would've been discarded long ago. ~ Nalini Singh

Now I can't abide rudeness, even in so called great artists. Rudeness and cruelty are the qualities i hate most. Rudeness and cruelty are always connected, I feel. One example out of many is Stalin. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Illium seems far too pretty to be dangerous." Dmitri's male beauty, by contrast, was a darker, edgier thing.
"No one ever expects him to take out a blade and slice off their balls," he said with lethal amusement in his tone as he drove them toward the George
Washington Bridge. "He does it with such grace, too. ~ Nalini Singh

He asked me, "Young man, do you love art? Great, lofty, immortal art?" I felt uncomfortable, and I replied that I did. That was a fatal mistake, because Volynsky put it this way: "If you love art, young man, how can you talk to me now about filthy lucre?"
He gave me a beautiful speech, itself an example of high art. It was passionate, inspired, a speech about great immortal art, and its point was that I shouldn't ask Volynsky for my pay. In doing so I defiled art, he explained, bringing it down to my level of crudity, avarice, and greed. Art was endangered. It could perish if I pressed my outrageous demands.
I tried to tell him that I needed the money. He replied that he couldn't imagine or understand how a man of the arts could be capable of speaking about such trivial aspects of life. He tried to shame me. But I held my own. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The edifice of science not only requires material, but also a plan. Without the material, the plan alone is but a castle in the air-a mere possibility; whilst the material without a plan is but useless matter. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Football is the ballet of the masses. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

If all the elements are arranged in the order of their atomic weights, a periodic repetition of properties is obtained. This is expressed by the law of periodicity. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

But it was the dark hunger in his tone that got to her. Damn kinky vampire had actually liked the knife.
Shit. ~ Nalini Singh

There is nothing in this world that I fear to say.
~ Dmitri Mendeleev

The depreciation of the rouble keeps me awake at night, Dmitri Fyodorovitch; people don't know that side of me ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What do you learn at school, then?"
"We learn about the Prophet and his three hundred authenticated miracles,and about Abraham and Isaac and Jonah and Omar and Ali and Hind and Fatima and the saints, and sometimes the big battles of Saladin against the barbarians. And we recite the Holy Koran because we have to learn al-Fatihah by heart."
"What's that?"
"It's the beginning."
"What's it like?"
Karatavuk closed his eyes and recited:'Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim...' When he's finished he opened his eyes, and mopped his forehead. "It's difficult" he observed.
"I didn't understand any of it" complained Mehmetcik. " It sounds nice though. was it language?"
"Of course it was language, stupid. It's Arabic."
"What's that then?"
"It's what Arabs speak. And it's what God speaks, and that's why we have to learn to recite it. It's something about being merciful and the Day of Judgement and showing us the right path, and if anything is going wrong, or you're worried, or someone's sick, you just have to say al-Fatihah and everything will probably be all right."
"I didn't know that God spoke language." observed Mehmetcik. Father Kristoforos speaks to him in Greek, but we don't understand that either."
"What do you learn, then."
"We learn more than you," answered Mehmetcik self-importantly. "We learn about Jesus Son of Mary and his miracles and St Nicholas and St Dmitri and St Menas and the saints and Abraham and Isaac and Jonah and ~ Louis De Bernieres

I have never been to a court s gracious as the one Neha keeps. Dmitri played a knife through his fingers, one of the three he'd brought back from Neha's territory. "She truly believes in giving honor to a visitor." He threw to knife at Jason.
"He threw it back as Venom added, "Thought she might have that guest neatly executed as the court sleeps. ~ Nalini Singh

You refused to fall in love with anyone else, Dmitri." A whisper with the impact of a gun-shot. "So I had to come back for you ... husband. ~ Nalini Singh

Naasir stretched lazily before settling back into his previous position. "I'm old enough now, and I want someone to play with like you play with Janvier and Raphael does with Elena. Even Dmitri plays with Honor." This seemed to fascinate him. "The rules are secret in each game. I want to have secret rules with a woman who . . ." A long pause. "A woman who knows me, understands what I am, and who wants to have secret rules with me. ~ Nalini Singh

He'd never forget what Naasir had said to him when Dmitri yelled that he didn't intend to bury another child and that Naasir needed to have a care for his life.
"Am I a person, Dmitri? Will you be sad if I die?"
Hardened and cruel though he'd become, the innocent question had shaken him. "Yes," he'd said, as honest in his answer as Naasir had been in his question. "You are a person. You are Naasir. I'll lose a piece of me if you die and it's a piece I'll never get back."
Naasir had stared at him for a long time before coming over to hug him. "Okay, Dmitri. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was a person before. ~ Nalini Singh

Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the world of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko 's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri clearly gives good . . . blood. ~ Nalini Singh

It had only been two days – two days – since he'd seen her last, and yet he'd missed her every step of the way. How was that possible? To miss someone you'd scarcely had in your life at all? For all his knowledge, he had no answer, only knew that every moment spent by her side made it that much more difficult to leave again. To accept the incoming battering of noise, the necessary barrenness of his life. The loneliness.

He could hear the music of her voice so clearly as she spoke now, every inflection, every intonation. And the world around them, too – birds on the wing and children laughing. Her presence was a continual surprise, one that made him by turns calm and edgy and covetous. And mindful, his responsibilities, self-appointed though they were, crowding back into his mind on a silent sigh. The Descent was still closing in on him, and Dmitri still lived, which meant there was too much left to do and no time for distraction. But still... ~ Angela B. Wade

Torture is a good way to get people to talk but a poor method of finding out the truth; people confess whether there is any reality to the confession or not.

-Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad ~ M T Anderson

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. ~ Dmitri A. Borgmann

Work, look for peace and calm in work: you will find it nowhere else. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

You're not useless. You're a hunky bite of sex and I'm not sure if Dmitri swings both ways. ~ Nalini Singh

Then what's the problem? You keep telling me she's just a job. So, fine. The job's done. You found her. You trained her. Now she has to do her part. She has to kill Dmitri. Whether she can survive the battle or not doesn't matter, and it isn't up to you to decide." Luc got up from the swing and went to Daniel. "Listen, man, I'm trying to be a friend here. You've been down here so long you're starting to think like one of them. Quit trying to grow a conscience and just finish what you started. ~ Angela B. Wade

If they drive God from earth, we shall shelter him underground - Dmitri Karamazov ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

No law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition has always been preceded by many presentiments. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

But I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

No one nor anything can silence me. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler , but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin 's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth [Symphony] was about. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I want you to have this feeling too - it is my moral responsibility to help you achieve this inner freedom. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Never in my life did I lend the unfortunate Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov (for he is unfortunate now, in any case) the sum of three thousand roubles today, or any other money, never, never! I swear to it by all that is holy in our world. Khokhlakov ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was a guest in the home of a conductor when I was in my early twenties. They turned on the gramophone and played a popular record of a foxtrot. I liked the foxtrot, but I didn't like the way it was played. I confided my opinion to the host, who suddenly said, 'Ah, so you don't like the way it's played? All right, if you want, write down the number by heart and orchestrate it and I'll play it. That is, of course, if you can do it and in a given amount of time: I'm giving you an hour. if you're really a genius, you should be able to write it in an hour.' I did it in 45 minutes. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an apparent periodicity of properties. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Pleasures flit by - they are only for yourself; work leaves a mark of long-lasting joy, work is for others. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Flirt with him if you want, Honor, but you're mine. ~ Nalini Singh

Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No. I came back to life after the Seventh. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
The Brothers Karamazov
Mitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI - Ivan, Chapter 4 - A Hymn and a Secret. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember once he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I do write quickly, that's true, but I think about my music for a comparatively long time, and until it's complete in my head I don't begin setting it down. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

It is surely indisputable that no single leader in the twentieth century exerted as great an influence on the course of world history as Lenin. ~ Dmitri Volkogonov

When he'd been younger and first starting to feel the urge to rut with females - and before he'd grown up to the point where many of the opposite sex found him irresistible - he'd tried to court girls by bringing them meat and shiny things. It turned out he'd scared them.
"Most women and girls," Dmitri had told him, "don't know what to do when a man drops a hunk of raw meat in their hands. ~ Nalini Singh

Fine. But remember, little rabbit, not a word to anyone." He moved close enough that the dark heat of him lapped against her in a quiet threat that made her glad for the blade. "I'm not a nice man when I'm angry."
She held her position, a ragged attempt to erase the humiliation of the panic attack. "I'm fairly certain you're not a nice man at all."
His answer was a slow smile that whispered of silk sheets, erotic whispers, and sweat-damp skin. The unhidden intent of it had her heart slamming hard against her ribs. "No" she said. Voice raw.
"A challenge." He wasn't touching her and yet she felt caressed by a thousand ropes of fur, soft and lush and unmistakably sexual. "I accept ~ Nalini Singh

Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of our time and I truly love many of his works. ( ... ) The marvellous composer has invariably been at the centre of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and made my own transcriptions as well. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The scent of the sea, a wild turbulent storm, crashing into her mind.
Elena, why is Dmitri naked? ~ Nalini Singh

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics ... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Most people are average, neither black nor white, but grey. A dirty shade of grey. To the best of my ability I tried to write about these people, about their completely average, commonplace dreams and hopes, and about their suspicious tendency towards murder. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Do not steal what only has value if freely given. ~ Nalini Singh

Dmitri was in my arms. ~ Richelle Mead

I'm training my left hand to write, in case I lose the ability in my right. That's gymnastics for the dying. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist ... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

In my time," he said, "they believed in witches. Are you a witch, Honor, that you make me say these things to you?"
Causing him to rip open wounds that had stayed safely scabbed over for so long that, most of the time, he managed to forget they existed.
Her hands, so very, very gentle, continued to hold his face as she tugged him down until their foreheads touched.
"I'm no witch, Dmitri. If I was, I'd know how to fix you. ~ Nalini Singh

This quality of Jewish folk music [- it can appear to be happy when it's tragic-] is close to my idea of what music should be. The should always be two layers in music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When Naasir was yet a child, Dmitri had told him he must learn as many languages as possible, so no one could keep secrets from him. This wasn't the first time that advice had held Naasir in good stead. ~ Nalini Singh

Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true! ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The establishment of a law, moreover, does not take place when the first thought of it takes form, or even when its significance is recognised, but only when it has been confirmed by the results of the experiment. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

I will love you even when I am dust on the wind. ~ Nalini Singh

How generous is your mistress,' said the light, mocking voice of Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Vishnevetsky, 'who said that as your guest I might hunt where I pleased.'

Half veiled by the blossom, he leaned against the opposite wall: a man strongly made with cleft chin and soft chestnut hair and moustache, and all the arts of a courtier. In his hands was a small Turkish bow; and across the spangled silk of his shirt hung a quiver. He smiled as he ceased speaking, and bending the bow, took aim, lightly, at a fluttering host of birds calling from the cherry tree over his head.

The Voevoda smiled. 'I am more generous still,' he said, and drew back his arm, the fingers brushing his girdle. A flick of silver, arching through the air, touched Vishnevetsky's bow with a click, and the Prince made a sound, cut off at once, as he stumbled off-balance, the sliced wood and hemp whipping about him: his arms flung involuntarily apart. Lymond's knife, its chased hilt gold in the lamplight, lay on the cracked tiles at his feet. Lymond said, 'I give you both weapon and quarry. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

We rarely know who our ancestors were. Who can even remember the names of their great-grandparents? They have vanished into the dim and distant past ~ Dmitri Volkogonov

Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer. Mahler & Berg are my favourite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, a Krenek and Milhaud whom I liked when I was young but cooled towards rapidly. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

One must speak the truth about the past or not at all. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation lie as a heavy burden on the psyche. And you must, you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich