1906 – 1999. A distinguished philologist and art historian. Academician. Public figure. An intellectual.
Quotes:
1. In order to preserve culture, it is not so important to have a university, but it is necessary to have a library.
2. Good people are very easy and interesting to speak and write about. This is because good people are always different and interesting. While the bad ones are all the same and always dull.
3. People must live with dignity. Dignity is respect for the family, for oneself, it is tidy manners, it is our choice of clothes and the clothes of our city. People will not develop dignity living in dirt – in these settings a person will not respect himself. And the very existence of man as a certain value will be destroyed.
4.... intelligence is equal to moral health, and health is necessary to live for a long time – not only physically, but also mentally.
5. Intelligence is, above all, behavior. An intelligent person is someone who behaves correctly in his own family, with friends, at work, etc.
6. Literature serves guides you in other epochs and among other peoples, revealing the hearts of people before you – in a word, it makes you wise.
7. Greed is an oblivion to dignity, it is an attempt to elevate one’s material interests above oneself, it is a spiritual oblivion, an awful constraining mindset, the wilting of intelligence, a pitiful fate, a bilious worldview, acrimony to oneself and others and the oblivion of good-fellowship.
8. The very trait defining the character of the Russian intelligentsia – their disgust for despotism – has nurtured resilience and self-esteem.
9. Conscience is not only the guardian angel of a man’s honor, it steers his freedom, it cares that freedom does not degrade into high-handedness, while telling the man his true way around the confused circumstances of life, especially modern life.
10. A person should have the right to change his or her beliefs for serious reasons of morality. It is to the greatest degree immoral to change one’s beliefs for the mere reason of advantage.
