Biographical and Self-Reflection

"In one thing you are very wrong: I am not a shepherd, I have no flock. I am a warrior and think more about the enemy than the flock." -Letters of N.A. Berdyaev to Shestov, 38/9

"My aversion to politics is growing. I, however, have never loved it and have always been, in regard to life questions, not a politician, but a moralist. The conflict of the individual with the world, history, and society has long deepened within me to the very physical foundations." -Letters of N.A. Berdyaev to Shestov, 44

"the left considers me right, the right considers me left, the orthodox consider me a heretic, the heretics consider me orthodox, and I always feel my image is distorted." -Letters of N.A. Berdyaev to Shestov, 13

"The question of the church torments me terribly. I have come to the conclusion that I am a Protestant, proceeding from the Protestant assertion of religious freedom, rejecting church authority, but then following a mystical, not a rationalistic, path." - Gippius and Merezhkovsky, 3

"1907 Kiev - Mother is ill. Father was near death. L. is ill. I have never felt the tragic horror of historical existence as much as I do now. Everything seems far more serious to me — the life of every being is not trivial. It is filled with religious significance. We treat what is too important in life and too many living beings with nihilism. I feel the full weight of the transition from nihilistic emptiness to new, positive content." - Gippius and Merezhkovsky, 9

"There are two types among those who strive to rise above the drabness of life - the one seek an intensification of vitality, happiness, and joy within limits, they look for means how to do it; the others search for truth and meaning, they want to pass into a world of truth and meaning, they seek an exit into a what. I very definitely belong to this second type." - Letters to Mme K, 6 

"You obviously confuse the fact that I am a philosopher and act in the intellectual sphere, and that therefore I must on account of my calling and specialty possess intellectual skill—with "rationality." I possess from childhood the absolute feeling of the reality of another, spiritual world, of an invisible world, and I always had difficulty in recognizing the reality of the visible world we know through our senses. This feeling is not connected with any philosophical ideas. Moreover, I possess a very strong feeling of the instability of the earthly world, the feeling that This world stands at a precipice, that there is a constant imminence of the end. In this respect, I am an apocalyptic person. One could say that I defend myself from the chasm opening on the other side by philosophical intellectuality, by efforts of thought." - Letters to Mme K, 17/8