On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the memory of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, we offer the most famous and relevant statements, thoughts and sayings of this classic of Russian literature. 
The main task of all the churches was the same: to inspire poor serfs that for them there is no happiness on earth, it is prepared for them in heaven, and that hard labor for someone else's uncle is a charitable deed.
You can't go anywhere in the carriage of the past.
The perfection of man is the meaning of life. 
If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed.
If you tell a person all the time that he is a "pig", then he really will grunt in the end.
If the cacti have distracted you from the carving of wood - be damned and rot! Rubbish cacti. Ivan Nightingale-Rakitsky has planted a bunch of them in the garden, of all sorts, thorns and thorns pierce my trousers ...
- from a letter to Leonid Leonov, Sorrento. October 21, 1928 
Against us is everything that has outlived its time allotted to it by history; and this gives us the right to consider ourselves still able to civil war. A natural conclusion follows from this: if the enemy does not surrender, he is exterminated. - "Pravda" and "Izvestia" on November 15, 1930. Subsequently, these words were attributed to Stalin, and they, repeatedly repeated in speeches, reports and on the radio, became a kind of motto and justification for subsequent mass "purges" and repressions.
- article "If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed", November 15, 1930 
There are only two forms of life: rotting and burning. Cowardly and greedy will choose the first, courageous and generous - the second ... - "Hours", 1896
Life shuffles us like cards, and only by chance - and then not for long - do we find ourselves in our place.
Personal egoism is the father of meanness. 
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of a free man.
The best pleasure, the highest joy of life is to feel needed and loved by people.
Love is the will to live.
People get confused in the mass of superfluous words.
It must be understood that the work of a scientist is the property of all mankind, and science is the area of greatest disinterestedness... 
There is no power more powerful than knowledge; a man armed with knowledge is invincible.
Memory, this scourge of the unfortunate, revives even the stones of the past and even pours drops of honey into the poison once drunk ... - "Chelkash"
... Russian people, due to the poverty and poverty of their lives, generally love to amuse themselves with grief, play with it like children, and are rarely ashamed to be unhappy.
In endless everyday life and grief - a holiday and a fire - fun; on an empty face and a scratch - decoration ... - "Childhood" 
The Russian language is rich enough, but it has its drawbacks, and one of them is hissing sound combinations: -lice, -lice, -lice, -schcha, -schey. On the first page of your story, lice crawl into in large numbers: arrived, worked, spoke. It is quite possible to do without insects. - from a letter to a young writer
A man sits ... does not move ... and sins because he is bored, there is nothing to do: the machine does everything for him ... He has no labor, and without labor - death to man! He got cars and thinks - good! But she, the car, is a devil's trap for you! There is no time for sin in work, but with a car - free! From freedom - a person will perish, like a worm, an inhabitant of the bowels of the earth, perishes in the sun ... From freedom, a person will perish! - "Foma Gordeev"
The word is the garment of all facts, of all thoughts.
The meaning of life is in the beauty and strength of striving for a goal, and it is necessary that every moment of being has its own lofty goal.
Have a small mind, but your own.
A teacher, if he is honest, should always be an attentive student.
To have the right to criticize, one must believe in some truth.
Man is the truth! Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain! Human! It's great! It sounds… proud! - "At the bottom"
Man is a miracle, the only miracle on earth, and all its other miracles are the results of the creativity of his will, reason, and imagination. - (Letter to I.V. Lvov, 1928)
Language is a writer's weapon, like a soldier's gun. The better the weapon, the stronger the warrior... 
The eternal revolutionary is a yeast that continuously irritates the brains and nerves of mankind, it is either a genius who, destroying the truths created before him, creates new ones, or - humble person, calmly confident in its power, burning with a quiet, sometimes almost invisible fire, illuminating the paths to the future.
And you will live on earth
How blind worms live:
No fairy tales will be told about you,
No songs will be sung about you.
About Gorky
Yan says that he will never forgive Gorky that he is now in the government.
- The day will come, I will rise openly against him. Not only as a person, but also as a writer. It's time to take off the mask that he great artist. True, he had talent, but he drowned in lies, in falsehood.
I am sad that everything happened like this, because I loved Gorky. I remember how in Capri, after singing, mandolins, tarantellas and wine, Yan made Gorky such an inscription on his book: “No matter what happens, dear Alexei Maksimovich, I will always love you.”
Surely even then Jan felt that their paths might part, but under the influence of Capri, tarantella, singing, music, his soul was soft, and he wanted it to be the same in the future. I, as now, see an office in Villa Spinola, swaying flowers outside the long window, Ian and I are alone in this room, music comes from the dining room. I felt very good, joyful, but Bolshevism was ripening there. After all, just that spring, Lunacharsky ranted so much about the school of propagandists, which they founded in Gorky's villa, but which did not last very long, since everyone quarreled, and most of the students, it seems, were provocateurs. And still, Alexei Maksimovich is still not entirely clear to me. Really, really...
- Ivan Bunin, "Through the mouths of the Bunins" Volume I, 1918
We had Halberstadt. it only person, which sensibly talks about the Council of Deputies. He also talked a lot about Gorky. Gorky's entry into the ranks of the government had great importance, this made it possible to recruit intellectuals dying of hunger into their ranks, who after that went to work for the Bolsheviks, who needed to have intelligent workers in their ranks.<...>Gorky was given 250 million rubles at his disposal. The bribery of the intelligentsia is developed to the point of impossibility, and the more counter-revolutionary it is, the more it is valued. Gorky joined the government just after the execution of officers, when 512 people were executed in one night.
- Ivan Bunin, "Through the mouths of the Bunins" Volume I, 1919
"You were like a high arch thrown between two worlds - the past and the future, as well as between Russia and the West." - From a letter from Romain Rolland to Gorky dated March 18, 1918
“Duality”, “contradiction”, “splitness” - these and similar concepts run through the entire history of criticism about Maxim Gorky and reflect both the “dual” personality of the writer himself and the ambivalent attitude of critics towards him. In the following, a selection of statements on this topic is given, following the texts in a separate entry, the main lines of this topic are commented on and discussed throughout the more than a century-long dispute about Gorky.
(1) Anton Chekhov (1899)
You are a lyricist by nature, the timbre of your soul is soft. If you were a composer, you would avoid writing marches. To be rude, to make noise, to sting, to vehemently denounce - this is not characteristic of your talent. From this you will understand if I advise you not to spare the proofs of the sons of bitches, males and pshibzdiki flashing here and there on the pages of Zhizn.
A.M. Gorky, September 3, 1899. Cited. according to the edition: Correspondence of A.P. Chekhov in two volumes, T. II, M. 1984, S. 321.,
(2) Alexander Blok (1908)
What is valuable is that Gorky is related not to Lunacharsky, but to Gogol: not with the spirit of the modern “intelligentsia”, but with the spirit of the “people”. This is love for Russia as a whole, which, perhaps, is “deified” by Gorky’s mind, which has fallen into the snares of intellectual contradictions and grandiloquent “battle” phrases characteristic of Lunacharsky; Gorky's heart is anxious and loves, without deifying, demandingly and severely, in a folk way, how can you love a mother, sister and wife in the single face of the motherland - Russia.
"The People and the Intelligentsia". Collected works in eight volumes, T. V, 1962, p.321.
(3) Korney Chukovsky (1924)
Worshiping Tolstoy [in the essay "Leo Tolstoy"], Gorky hates Tolstoyism. It seems to him false, far-fetched, hostile to that life-loving pagan who Tolstoy really was. In Russian literature, this idea that Tolstoy lived at enmity with himself is not a new idea, but Gorky expressed it in a new way, in images, brightly and loudly. Is it not because he felt it with such extreme force that he himself is also a double person, that next to his painting all his preaching also seems to be a far-fetched falsity, that in him, as in Tolstoy, there are two souls, one is secret, the other is for all, and one denies the other? The first is deeply hidden, and the second is in full view of everyone, Gorky himself willingly demonstrates it at every turn.
"Two Souls of M. Gorky", Leningrad 1924, pp. 51-52.
(4) Evgeny Zamyatin (early 1920s)
I will talk to you about two writers who differ sharply from one another. The first is young, violent, stubborn, recalcitrant, to whom freedom, will, anarchy are dearer than anything in the world. The second - knows everything; for the second - everything is decided, there are no questions. The second one has programs and laws. The first is an anarchist; the second is a Marxist. The first rebels against the fact that twice two makes four... The second subordinates everything to the law, because it is the mind that cannot refute this law. The first is all feeling, the second is all mind. And both of these writers together bear the same name: Maxim Gorky...
Draft draft of a lecture on Gorky in Pedagogical Institute them. A.I. Herzen in Petrograd. Cit. according to the first publication from the Gorky Archive in an article by N.N. Primochkina "M. Gorky and E. Zamyatin, Russian Literature, 1987, 4, p. 153.
(5) Alexander Voronsky (1926)
Majestic, free and fearless is the thought of man, but in Russia it is disunited and cut off from the primitive instincts of life. In this fragmentation, the writer also sees the tragedy of our revolution. In the revolution, the "reasonable beginning" - the intelligentsia - turned out to be outside the "people's element"./.../
Hence Gorky's doubts and hesitations.
Gorky is not an integral writer, he is not monolithic, as it is now customary to express it. In the story "Karamora" the hero says: "A whole person always looks like an ox - it's boring with him./.../ Confused people are more interesting." These words can also be applied to Gorky. He also loves confused people, and many contradictions coexist in him. /.../ But it should be noted, especially for our excessively "monolithic" artists and critics, that it was precisely thanks to the lack of integrity and complexity of his nature that Gorky became a great, huge, honest and interesting writer.
"About Gorky". For the first time - Pravda (1926), cited from the book: A. Voronsky, Selected Articles on Literature, pp. 43-44.
(6) J. Elsberg (1927)
Gorky perfectly understands that Klim [the hero of the novel The Life of Klim Samgin] is a malicious enemy of those same "interesting" people, "eccentrics" whom he himself loves so much. But still Gorky cannot distinguish himself sharply and definitely from Samghin. He cannot, because skepticism in a pessimistic frame has already eaten into him, because to expose Klim Samghin to the end means not to stop at self-exposure, because, as we have seen, Gorky agrees with Samghin in many respects. Faith in "humanism", in culture in general, in Romain Rolland, in eccentrics, is intertwined, especially in works of art Gorky of recent times, with "objectivism", in which there is also a chill of pessimistic indifference. /.../ The Life of Klim Samghin shows that Samghin's skeptical glasses have already had their harmful effect on Gorky's eyes.
"Maxim Gorky's eyes through Samghin glasses", At the literary post, 2, 1927, p.31.
(7) Georgy Adamovich (1936)
Gorky's social anxiety was always very acute. One might think /.../ that he is guided by sympathy for people, that humane considerations, true or not true, make him subordinate the dangerous forces of poetry to the principles of rationality and utility. But the point is that Gorky's work is the least "humane" of all, and his duality is especially evident here. No matter how soft-hearted or even sentimental Gorky may be in Everyday life, - in creativity he is severe and cruel. Inspiration overshadows him only in the face of evil, and not one Russian writer has left a gallery of types similar to Gorky's, a gallery from which the heart shrinks. There is no light in Gorky's work. He is not very erotic, in the highest sense of the word, and closed in on himself. Some incurable dryness binds him.
"Maksim Gorky"; Modern notes(Paris) 1936, Vol. LXI, S.391-392.
(8) Vladislav Khodasevich (1936)
Lord! If the truth is holy
The world can't find the way,
Honor to the madman who will inspire
Mankind has a golden dream!
(M. Gorky, "At the Bottom")
Through the Russian liberation movement, and then through the revolution, he passed as the instigator and strengthener of dreams, Luka, the crafty wanderer. From an early story written in 1893 about an exalted siskin, “who lied,” and about a woodpecker, a base “lover of truth,” all his literary, like all life activity, is imbued with a sentimental love for all kinds of lies and a stubborn, consistent dislike to the truth. “I sincerely and unshakably hate the truth,” he wrote to E.D. Kuskova in 1929. It seems to me that I see how he, with an evil face, bristling, with a vein swollen around his neck, deduces these words.
Gorky, op. according to the book: V.F. Khodasevich, Necropolis. Memories, Paris 1976, pp. 252-253.
(9) Robert Louis Jackson (1988)
In an article in "Novaja zhizn'" in December 1917, Gor'kij wrote of the "monstrous contradictions" of the Russian revolution. Gor'kij, one might say, grappled with these contradictions not only during the Russian revolution, but in the periods leading up to and following that cataclysmic event. As a man and writer, however, he was unable and unwilling to come to terms with these contradictions. "My thoughts and feelings", he once wrote, "will never reach an equilibrium, will never arrive at a common denominator". Yet the very disequilibriums and contradictions that we find in Gor'kij the man and thinker are the ones that give his life and work their enormous vitality, interest and value.
Critics and scholares today are reassessing Gor'kijs complex personality and protean work.
(10) Mikhail Agursky (1988)
In an essay about Leo Tolstoy, Gorky calls him a "mischievous one." He claims that Tolstoy did not pretend to be who he really was. Being a pagan, Tolstoy appeared before people as a Christian thinker - and not because of hypocrisy, but in the course of a certain strange game with yourself and others.
It seems that Gorky himself was such a "mischievous person". If Tolstoy, under the guise of a Christian thinker, hid his deep paganism, then Gorky used the mask of a radical (later a Social Democrat) to hide his deep denial of the world, his identification with the ancient dualistic tradition, which saw the creation of the devil in the world and passionately sought salvation in the destruction of the world. evil.
The Bolsheviks were close to Gorky, as people who most actively sought to radically remake the whole world, so he sincerely sympathized with them - but he never identified himself with them spiritually. He remained a tragic spirit of denial, looking for ways to save the world and building his own soteriology, in which the deeply hidden ancient mysticism takes on board elements of various modern philosophical and scientific doctrines.
"Unknown Gorky", Twenty-two, 1988, Nr. 61, S. 166.
(11) Boris Paramonov (1992)
In Gorky, in Bolshevism, Europeanized Russia exploded, but this explosion was directed, technically calculated: anarchy was motivated and covered up by a rigid organization. That is why it is so difficult to decide what actually happened in Russia: a return to pre-Petrine archaism or a futuristic leap. It was both. Movement, however, did not work out - "stagnation" came out.
Gorky evokes mixed feelings - as Russia itself, perhaps one should say - as the Russian revolution and subsequent events. This, of course, is a compliment to Gorky, a recognition of his timeliness, relevance, and his talented expressiveness. Gorky is significant and should be remembered.
"Bitter, White spot”, October, 1992, No. 5, S. 167.
(12) V.A. Keldysh (1993)
In this sense [i.e. in the sense of opposing Gorky the publicist to Gorky the artist], one of the main artistic oppositions in Gorky is first of all noteworthy. Two types of people pass through all his work - a person of a “motley soul” (the expression of the writer) and a whole personality.
In the "motley soul" "all contradictions live together" (remembering the words of Mitya Karamazov). In some characters, "variegation" is perceived as inferiority, in others - as inner wealth. Next to the “variegation”, the destructive “variegation” is polyphonic (as in the image of Leo Tolstoy, the “man-orchestra”, from the well-known essay dedicated to him). It was not only the difference in the characters themselves that affected, but also the difference of opinion of the writer, sometimes seeing in this quality a national vice, and sometimes the exact opposite - the spiritual heritage of the people: “A man from a book is either bad or good ... but living men are neither good nor bad, they are surprisingly interesting” (“In people”)./.../
The leading opposition of Gorky's creativity that we are talking about is, in essence, the opposition of normativity and anorativity.
“On value orientations in the work of M. Gorky”, IAN, Literature and Language Series, vol. 52, No. 4, 1993, p. 23.
(13) Michel Niqueux (1996)
Gor "kij a mérité le purgatoire qu" il connaît maintenant. Il est victime de son dédoublement, de ses "deux âmes", et récolte la haine qui l "habitait (haine contre le passé, les petits-bourgeois, les paysans, l" Église, les "saboteurs", etc.). Sa tragédie est celle de toute une philosophie prométhéenne, d "un humanisme antichrétien, d" un relativisme qui justifie les moyens par la fin (après avoir affirmé le contraire à R. Rolland (lettre du 25 janvier 1922)). Elle est celle d "une majorité de ses contemporains, et Gor" kij est autant le reflet de son époque que son inspirateur. Comme chantre de l "idéologie du stalinisme qui repose sur cette philosophie, Gor" kij ne peut en être la victime innocente. /.../ Ce sont ces contradictions et ces déchirements qui font de sa figure l "emblème de toute une epoque. Le grand mérite de la perestroika a été de nous rendre un Gor" kij dans toute sa complexité.
[Gorky deserved the purgatory he is now undergoing. He became a victim of his duality, his "two souls", and he experiences from the critics the hatred that lived in himself (hatred of the past, the philistines, peasants, the church, "saboteurs", etc.). His tragedy is the tragedy of all Promethean philosophy, anti-Christian humanism, that relativism according to which the end justifies the means (although in a letter to R. Roland (January 25, 1922) he resolutely renounces this point of view). This is the tragedy of most of his contemporaries, and Gorky is both a reflector and an inspirer of his era. A singer of Stalinist ideology, Gorky cannot be considered an innocent victim. /.../ It is his contradictions and discontinuities that make this figure an emblem whole era. The great merit of perestroika is that it gave us back Gorky in all his complexity.]
"Le renouvellement des études sur Gor'kij (1986-1996)", Revue des Ètudes slaves, Paris, LXVIII/4, 1996, p. 541-553; 553.
(14) Pavel Basinsky (2005)
Hatred of the Russian Empire poisoned all his work. However, not only him. It was an era of endless splits and some kind of terrible, mysterious inner will to self-destruction. The intelligentsia went against the Church and the state. Church against Tolstoy.
It is no coincidence that Gorky became one of the most prominent spokesmen of this era.
Everything in him combined into an explosive mixture: love for man and hatred for people, the search for God and anti-Christianity, the will to live and the will to self-destruction, love for Russia and description " lead abominations" her. Pity and cruelty. Health and decadence. Everything, everything, everything.
GORKY, "Young Guard" M. 2005, S. 181 (Life of remarkable people).
Maksim Gorky. Quotes from the works of Maxim Gorky
M. Gorky "Makar Chudra", publication year 1892
Life? Other people? Hey! And what's up to you? Aren't you your own life? Other people live without you and will live without you. Do you think that someone needs you? You are not bread, not a stick, and no one needs you.
M. Gorky "At the bottom", the year of publication 1901-1902
In the carriage of the past - you will not go anywhere ...
Leaving early is always better.
When work is pleasure, life is good! When work is a duty, life is slavery!
It turns out, don’t paint yourself outside, everything will be erased ... everything will be erased ...
A man is free... he pays for everything himself: for faith, for unbelief, for love, for intelligence - a man pays for everything himself, and therefore he is free!..
To caress a person is never harmful ...
A man can do anything... If only he wants to...
I say talent, that's what a hero needs. And talent is faith in yourself, in your strength.
A person should contain, if possible, everything, plus something else.
Human! You have to respect the person! Do not pity ... do not humiliate him with pity ... you must respect!
M. Gorky "The Life of Klim Samgin", publication year 1925-1936
What does it mean to die honestly? Everyone dies - honestly, but they live ...
It seems to me that only unsuccessful, unhappy people like to argue. Happy people live in silence.
You need to know everything, then maybe you will learn something.
Some people really enjoy delivering bad news.
Often it seemed to him that he was so bombarded with other people's words that he no longer saw himself.
You should know: all women are terminally ill with loneliness.
People, my dear, are like dogs: breeds are different, but everyone has the same habits.
The soul should be protected from being clogged with the ugliness of small grievances and sorrows.
A person is valuable in terms of resistance to his life force - if she does not turn it, but he turns it in his own way - my respect to him!
Finally happy man is a limited person.
Behave like a samovar: inside - boil, and outside with boiling water - do not splash.
People who give free rein to the imagination, life is easier.
You think I don't know what it means to be silent? One is silent - there is nothing to say, the other - there is no one to say.
The bug is happy because it smells bad.
What can you imagine that is crazier than reality?
A woman who is not jealous does not feel loved ...
… in love there is no mercy.
You see, life must be built like an orchestra: let everyone honestly play their part, and everything will be fine.
M. Gorky "Mother", year of publication 1936
Personal selfishness - father meanness
Selfishness is the worst kind of addiction.
For the free - all heights are achievable.
Children are often smarter than adults and always sincere.
Children are our tomorrow's judges.
A day is a small life, and you have to live it as if you have to die now, and you were suddenly given another day.
The perfection of man is the meaning of life...
Grievances interfere with doing things, stopping near them is wasting time for nothing.
Mother is always against death.
Not to feel desires in oneself means not to live.
Do not write on the blank pages of your heart in other people's words.
Life shuffles us like cards, and only by chance - and not for long - do we fall into place.
When a person wants to know, he investigates; when he wants to hide from the anxieties of life, he invents.
The power of knowledge is in doubt.
Beauty and wisdom are in simplicity.
Learn from everyone - do not imitate anyone.
The consequences of love are always the same - a new man!
Children are the living flowers of the earth...
M. Gorky "Old Woman Izergil", year of publication 1952
… Those who do not know how to live would go to bed. Those to whom life is sweet, here they sing.
Do not turn a stone out of the way with thought.
The beautiful are always brave.
And I see that people do not live, but everyone tries on and puts their whole life on it. And when they rob themselves, having wasted time, they will begin to cry at fate. What is fate here? Everyone is his own destiny!
Nothing - neither work nor women exhaust the bodies and souls of people as exhausting dreary thoughts.
Man's punishment is in himself.
I never dated the ones I once loved. These are bad meetings, all the same, as if with the dead.
Whoever does nothing, nothing will happen to him.
To live, one must be able to do something.
Freedom from everything is punishment.
In life, you know, there is always a place for exploits. And those who do not find them for themselves are simply lazy or cowards, or do not understand life, because if people understood life, everyone would want to leave behind their shadow in it. And then life would not devour people without a trace ...
You said: "Lead!" — and I led! shouted Danko, standing against them with his chest. “I have the courage to lead, that’s why I led you!” And you? What have you done to help yourself? You just walked and did not know how to save strength for a longer path! You just walked, walked like a flock of sheep!
M. Gorky "Foma Gordeev", year of publication 1953
Tell me, what do you need to do to live in peace... that is, to be satisfied with yourself? - For this you need to live restlessly and avoid, like a bad disease, even the possibility of being pleased with yourself!
You must always live in love with something inaccessible to you ... A person becomes taller because he reaches up ...
Love for a woman is always fruitful for a man, whatever it may be, even if it gives only suffering - and there is always a lot of value in them.
The one who has sinned a lot is always smart. Sin teaches...
Some people always and in everything are lucky - not because they are talented and industrious, but rather because, having a huge reserve of energy, on the way to their goals they do not know how - they cannot even - think about the choice of means and do not know another law, other than your desire.
Do you want happiness for yourself ... Well, it is not given soon ... You need to look for it, like a mushroom in the forest, you need to break your back over it ... and when you find it - look - isn't it a toadstool?
Another person, just like an owl in the daytime, rushes about in life ... He searches, searches for his place, fights, fights - only feathers fly from him, but there’s no use ... He beats, gets sick, sheds everything, but on a grand scale and sticks anywhere , just to take a break from his maety.
Have a small mind, but your own.
There is no person on earth more disgusting and disgusting than one who gives alms, there is no person more unfortunate than one who accepts it!
M. Gorky "Petishites", 1984
When it is uncomfortable for a person to lie on one side, he rolls over to the other, and when it is uncomfortable for him to live, he only complains. And you make an effort - roll over.
"Maybe I should leave?"
- No, don't worry! I don't consider you an animate object...
Maxim Gorky is a cult writer Soviet period Russian history. His works are known not only in our country, but also far beyond its borders. At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe, America and other countries formed their own idea of Russia based on them. Critics are divided about Gorky's talent as a writer, but few deny his role in the development of socialist realism as the main literary direction Soviet countries. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the writer, we offer readers a selection of quotes about M. Gorky.
- “The sharpest and deepest feature, moreover, the basis of Gorky’s artistic individuality is his despotism. The lord, the ruler, the despot who does not tolerate contradictions in anyone, even in himself. If Gorky contradicts Gorky, then he simply covers him with a hat; and let there be two heads under the cap - outside there is complete unity. L. N. Andreev
- "Nineties XIX years centuries and the first half of the nine hundredth passed in Russia under the sign of Gorky - even his haters will not argue with this. D. L. Bykov
- "Gorky is a great, monstrous, touching, strange and absolutely necessary writer today." D. L. Bykov
- "Gorky is the proletarian Pechorin, evidence that now the fate of Russia will be decided by the lower classes." D. L. Bykov
- "Gorky was not fascinated by Marxism, but was fascinated by the dream of a new man and a new God..." D. L. Bykov
- “I don’t like Gorky as a person, but what a huge, strong writer he is and what terrible and important things he says about the writer.” M. A. Bulgakov
- "For so many years of world fame, completely unparalleled in undeservedness ..." I. A. Bunin
- "Chekhov and Gorky are indeed 'prophets', although not in the sense that they are thought of, as perhaps they think of themselves. They are 'prophets' because they bless what they wanted to curse and curse what they wanted to bless. They wanted to show that a man without God is God, but they showed that he is a beast, worse than a beast is cattle, worse than cattle is a corpse, worse than a corpse is nothing. D. S. Merezhkovsky
- "Chekhov and Gorky are the spokesmen not so much of the people as of the class, not so much of the cultural as of the intelligent middle of the Russian middle class, the most numerous and active, which at the present time has to "make history" and for what will be done, give an answer to doomsday stories". D. S. Merezhkovsky
- "Man, that's the truth. In this - all beginnings and ends. All in man, all for man. There is only man." - "The true Shekinah (God) is man." Such is Gorky's confession. D. S. Merezhkovsky
- "Gorky deserved his fame: he discovered new, unknown countries, a new continent spiritual world; he is the first and only, in all likelihood, unique in his field. Upon entering that "country of darkness and the shadow of death," which is called barefooting, the name of Gorky will forever remain inscribed. D. S. Merezhkovsky
- "There is no art in Gorky's works; but they have something that is hardly less valuable than the most high art: life, the most truthful original of life, a piece torn out of life with body and blood ... " D. S. Merezhkovsky
- “It’s not worth more than a couple of words to say about Gorky as an artist. The truth about the tramp, said by Gorky, deserves the greatest attention; but poetry, with which he, unfortunately, sometimes considers it necessary to decorate this truth, deserves nothing but condescending oblivion.” D. S. Merezhkovsky
- There was, finally, one area in which he felt helpless - and suffered from this in the most real way.
- And tell me, please, that my poems are very bad?
- Bad, Alexei Maksimovich.
- It's a pity. Terribly sorry. All my life I dreamed of writing at least one good poem. V. F. Khodasevich - "[...] he demanded criticism, listened to it with gratitude and paid attention only to reproaches, passing praise past his ears. Not infrequently he defended himself, argued, but just as often yielded in a dispute, and having yielded, he would certainly sit down for alterations and corrections ". V. F. Khodasevich
- "I have not seen a man who would wear his fame with greater skill and nobility than Gorky." V. F. Khodasevich
- "From Nizhny Novgorod workshop Alexei Peshkov, who studied with copper money, to Maxim Gorky, a world-famous writer, is a huge distance that speaks for itself, no matter how one regards Gorky's talent." V. F. Khodasevich
- “He considered it his duty to stand before humanity, before the “masses” in that image and in that pose that these masses expected and demanded from him in exchange for their love. Often, too often, he had to feel himself as some kind of mass illusion, part of that "golden dream", which was once inspired and which he, Gorky, no longer has the right to destroy. V. F. Khodasevich
- “He had the habit of overgrowing with petty crooks and beggars every time he appeared on the street. In their craft, he liked the interweaving of truth and lies, as in the craft of magicians. he was counted." V. F. Khodasevich
- "He liked everyone, definitely all people who introduce an element of rebellion or at least mischief into the world, right down to the arsonist maniacs, about whom he wrote a lot and about whom he was ready to talk for hours on end." V. F. Khodasevich
- “This“ great realist ”in truth liked only everything that adorns reality, takes it away from it, or does not take it into account, or simply adds to it what is not in it. I saw many writers who were proud that Gorky crying while listening to their works. V. F. Khodasevich
- "Gorky happened to live in an era when the" golden dream "was a dream of social revolution as a panacea for all human suffering. He supported this dream, he became its herald - not because he believed so deeply in the revolution, but because he believed in the salvation of the dream itself. V. F. Khodasevich
- “His whole life is permeated with acute pity for a man whose fate seemed hopeless to him. He saw the only salvation of a person in creative energy, which is unthinkable without the incessant overcoming of reality - hope. He did not appreciate the ability of a person to realize hope, but this very ability to dream, the gift of a dream - led him to delight and awe. The creation of any dream that could captivate humanity, he considered a true sign of genius, and the maintenance of this dream was a matter of great philanthropy. " V. F. Khodasevich
- "[...] he failed to make himself a real, disciplined Marxist, but nevertheless accepted Marxism as his official religion or as a working hypothesis, on which he tried to base his artistic work". V. F. Khodasevich
- "In fame, none of the Russian writers that I had to meet could compare with him. He received a huge number of letters in all languages. Wherever he appeared, strangers turned to him, asking for autographs. Interviewers besieged him. Newspaper correspondents rented rooms in the hotels where he stayed, and lived for two or three days, only to see him in the garden or at the table-d'ot. V. F. Khodasevich
- "All his literary, as well as all his life activity, is imbued with a sentimental love for all kinds of lies and a stubborn, consistent dislike for the truth." V. F. Khodasevich
- [Gorky] is incomparably greater than Bunin: more, and more humane, and more original, and more necessary - Gorky. Gorky is an era, and Bunin is the end of an era. M. Tsvetaeva
- "The tragedies of life that tormented the former great writers, Gorky replaced the tragedies of everyday life." K. I. Chukovsky
- "Gorky demands that we be compassionate, because it seems to him that in the cruel conditions of painful Russian life, pity is as necessary as air." K. I. Chukovsky
- Gorky is not a seeker of God, not a seeker of truth, he is only a seeker of happiness: happiness is dearer to him than truth, holier than God- and if God does not give happiness to mankind, Gorky will reject such a worthless God. And if the truth does not give mankind happiness, then long live the lie! K. I. Chukovsky
