To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!
In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.
When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.
There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.
When we retreat to the country, we are hiding not from people, but from our pride, which, in the city and among people, operates unfairly and immoderately.
We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.
It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.
Lermontov died at age twenty-eight and wrote more than have you and I put together. Talent is recognizable not only by quality, but also by the quantity it yields.
Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.
What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.
By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.
Writers are as jealous as pigeons.
People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people.
If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all.
Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one whokills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?
It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.
A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.
Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?
I don’t know why one can’t chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue.
Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.