But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years - a hundred years! - ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. ("In Old Russia"). Yevgeny Zamyatin
About This Quote

"In Old Russia" is one of the greatest stories ever to be told, and we know this because we've read it and listened to it and watched the movie and seen the play and seen the musical. There is just something about this story that echoes through time and into our hearts. It is a tale of a world that no longer exists but once existed where a man was able to rise from nothingness to be king of all he surveyed. It is a tale of a world where magic was real, where anything was possible, where time could stand still for a moment, where enemies could become friends or even lovers. It is a tale of a world that has been lost forever but will live on in our memories forever.

Source: The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

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More Quotes By Yevgeny Zamyatin
  1. You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you you hate it because you are afraid of it you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.
  2. A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.
  3. Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth...
  4. Cruel', O'Kelly laughed, 'it's cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God's mercy, then it's his gift of making us unable to lie.
  5. Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
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