1801 – 1872. Russian lexicographer, ethnographer, doctor. Known by his Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language.
Quotes:
1. As rubles are made of kopeks, knowledge is made of grains of reading.
2. Old people tell you: beware. Those old people are lying, overwhelmed by envy.
3. The teacher himself must be what he wants the pupil to do.
4. Language is the age-old work of an entire generation.
5. Life is given for joy but it must be defended, so the true purpose of man is to fight for truth and justice, to fight against everything that denies human joy.
6. Dying today is scary, dying some day is trivial.
7. Don’t play tricks with language: a person’s verbal speech is a visible connection, a link between the soul and body, spirit and flesh.
8. The language will fail to keep up with education and contemporary needs if it is not allowed to sprout from its root, to ferment on its own.
9. How can one determine the identity of the spirit? Of course, by the manifestation of spirit in thought. One belongs to the nation in whose language he is thinking.
10. The writer of the dictionary is not a mentor of the language but its servant, a slave of sorts…
