Nikolai Delphiki Quotes

Once you get a brother, you don't give him up easy. ~ Orson Scott Card

The thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns being the keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept. ~ Orson Scott Card

Thanks from keeping me from being a liar," said Nikolai.
"What?"
"About your having diarrhea."
"For you I'd get dysentery."
"Now that's friendship. ~ Orson Scott Card

He never looks you straight in the eye; or if he does, it is somehow vaguely, indefinitely; he does not pierce you with the hawk's eye or the falcon's gaze of a cavalry officer. The reason for that is that he sees, at one and the same time, both your features and those of some plaster Hercules standing in his room, or else he imagines a painting of his own that he still means to produce. That is why his responses are often incoherent, not to the point, and the muddle of things in his head increases his timidity all the more. ~ Nikolai Gogol

In sex we have the source of man's true connection with the cosmos and of his servile dependence. The categories of sex, male and female, are cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev

In our parts such characters sometimes turn up that, however many years ago you met them, you can never recall them without an inner trembling. ~ Nikolai Leskov

You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write! ~ Nikolai Gogol

To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka - a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman - a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual who was seated in it. "Look at that carriage," one of them said to the other. "Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?" "I think it will," replied his companion. "But not as far as Kazan, eh?" "No, not as far as Kazan." With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door, its occupant ~ Nikolai Gogol

Mathematical theories have sometimes been used to predict phenomena that were not confirmed until years later. For example, Maxwell's equations, named after physicist James Clerk Maxwell, predicted radio waves. Einstein's field equations suggested that gravity would bend light and that the universe is expanding. Physicist Paul Dirac once noted that the abstract mathematics we study now gives us a glimpse of physics in the future. In fact, his equations predicted the existence of antimatter, which was subsequently discovered. Similarly, mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky said that "there is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not someday be applied to the phenomena of the real world. ~ Clifford A. Pickover

Manilov was pleased by these final words, but he still couldn't make sense of the deal itself, and for want of an answer, he began sucking his clay pipe so hard that it started to wheeze like a bassoon. He seemed to be trying to extract from it an opinion about this unprecedented business; but the clay pipe only wheezed and said nothing. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev

History is not an objective empirical datum, it is a myth. ~ Nikolai A. Berdyaev

I'm not keen on riot. Unless they involve dancing, but I believe those are usually referred to as parties. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Even a stone has its uses, and man who is the most intelligent of all creatures must be of some use, hasn't he? ~ Nikolai Gogol

He was already beginning, as always happens at a respectable age, to take a firm stand for Raphael and the old masters––not because he was fully convinced of their lofty merit, but so as to shove them in the faces of young artists. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Each one of us shares in the destiny of the world and humanity, and must accept his own portion of the general responsibility ~ Nikolai A. Berdyaev

Thus having been undeservedly accepted at the Conservatory as a professor, I soon became one of its best and possibly its very best pupil, judging by the quantity and value of the information it gave me! ~ Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Your highness - "
"Nikolai," he corrected. "But I've also been known to answer to 'sweetheart' or 'handsome.'"
Mal whirled, but I silenced him with a pleading look.
"You need to stop that right now, Nikolai," I said. "Or I'll knock those princely teeth out myself. ~ Leigh Bardugo

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable. ~ Nikolai Gogol

I saw the prince when I was in Os Alta," said Ekaterina. "He's not bad looking."
"Not bad looking?" said another voice. "He's damnably handsome."
Luchenko scowled. "Since when - "
"Brave in battle, smart as a whip." Now the voice seemed to be coming from above us. Luchenko craned his neck, peering into the trees. "An excellent dancer," said the voice. "Oh, and an even better shot."
"Who - " Luchenko never got to finish. A blast rang out, and a tiny black hole appeared between his eyes.
I gasped. "Imposs - "
"Don't say it," muttered Mal. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Nikolai stroked her cheek, then wrapped her in his embrace. "You're safe," he said tenderly beside her ear. "I've got you, and I'm going to keep you safe. ~ Lara Adrian

She might be a dragon on a leash, but she was still a dragon. She would stall. She'd find a way to fix this, bracelet or not.
Or, like witches, she and Nikolai would both burn ~ Evelyn Skye

Lay down the thorn, boy king. Haven't you earned a bit of rest? Aren't you tired?'

He was. Saints, he was. He thought he had grown used to his scars, but he had never grasped how much of his will it would take to hide them. He had fought and sacrificed and bled. He had gone long days without rest and long nights without comfort. All for Ravka, all for an ideal he would never attain and a country that would never care. ~ Leigh Bardugo

In this holy russia of ours everything is infected by a mania for imitation, and everyone apes his superior ~ Nikolai Gogol

A Russian peasant scratching the back of his head means many different things. ~ Nikolai Gogol

That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing. ~ Nikolai Gogol

You'll still make a great king."
"Of course I will," he scoffed. "I'm melancholy, not daft. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Slowly, Genya stood, and silence fell around her. "How old are you, Yuri ?"

"Eighteen, moi soverenyi"

"When i was a year older than you, the Darkling set his mosnters on me, creatures born of the power you venerate so much. They had a taste for human flesh. He had to force them to stop."

"Then he was not so cruel-"

Genya held up a hand, and Nikolai was glad to see Yuri shut is mouth. "The Darkling didn't want me to die. He wante me to live - like this."

"More fool of him,"sais Nikolai quietly, "to let such soldier survive. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I think fatigue suits you, Zoya. The pallor. The shadows beneath your eyes. You look like a heroine in a novel. "
"I look like a woman about to step on your foot. "
"Now, now. You're managing remarkably well. And the smiling hasn't killed you yet."
"Yet. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Bread for me is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. ~ Nikolai A. Berdyaev

Here you will meet singular side-whiskers, tucked with extraordinary and amazing art under the necktie, velvety whiskers, satiny whiskers, black as sable or coal, but, alas, belonging only to the foreign office. Providence has denied black side-whiskers to those serving in other departments; they, however great the unpleasantness, must wear red ones. Here you will meet wondrous mustaches, which no pen or brush is able to portray; mustaches to which the better part of a lifetime is devoted––object of long vigils by day and by night; mustaches on which exquisite perfumes and scents have been poured, and which have been anointed with all the most rare and precious sorts of pomades, mustaches which are wrapped overnight in fine vellum, mustaches which are subject to the most touching affection of their possessors and are the envy of passers-by. A thousand kinds of hats, dresses, shawls––gay-colored, ethereal, for which their owners' affection sometimes lasts a whole two days––will bedazzle anyone on Nevsky Prospect. ~ Nikolai Gogol

You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs. ~ Nikolai Gogol

The "laughter through tears of sorrow" that Pushkin noted elsewhere in his work is precisely laughter. The images it produces are too deeply ambiguous to bear any social message. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Unless a convention of anarchists visited the library yesterday, most books ought to be in their rightful places. ~ Evelyn Skye

I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco. ~ Nikolai Gogol

There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others. ~ Nikolai Gogol

How dared you, I repeat, in disregard of all decency, call me a goose? ~ Nikolai Gogol