It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.
The air of one’s native country is the most healthy air.
When an actor has money he doesn’t send letters, he sends telegrams.
You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.
If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.
I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view – I change it every month – and so I’ll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.
An artist’s flair is sometimes worth a scientist’s brains.
You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.
The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.
Man will become better when you show him what he is like.
Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic.
One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled to old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature’s charge and all progress hinges upon it.
You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question.
You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!
Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.
Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.
I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it’s tobacco, then let it be tobacco.
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?
It’s worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.