True happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel probably betrayed God because he longed for solitude, which angels do not know.
And you know once a man has fished, or watched the thrushes hovering in flocks over the village in the bright, cool, autumn days, he can never really be a townsman, and to the day of his death he will be drawn to the country.
And you know that anyone who at least once in his life has caught a perch or seen blackbirds migrating in the fall, when they rush in flocks over the village on clear, cool days, is no longer a townsman, and will be drawn towards freedom till his dying day.
I love him, love him. He’s a millstone round my neck – he’ll take me to the bottom with him. But I love this millstone of mine – I can’t live without it.
Don’t be ashamed of loving someone. You should know that someone who must be ashamed; actually that who does not know how to love someone even though know loved by someone.
Love must be plucked out the moment it springs up in the heart.
I confessed my love for her, and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, petty, and deceptive everything which had got in the way of our love had been. I realized that when you love someone, your reasoning about that love should be based on what is supreme, on what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue, in the way that they are usually understood, otherwise it is not worth reasoning at all.
Purity and virtue scarcely differ from vice, if they’re not free of malice.
She was fond of her comfort.
When real life is wanting one must create an illusion. It is better than nothing.
Butterfly land on a human just once in life; if you miss that oppurtunity, you have no another chance. Because that butterfly will be dead the next day.
My life has been a failure. I am clever and brave and strong. If I had lived a normal life I might have become another Schopenhauer or Dostoieffski. I am losing my head!
I went to the Hotel of the Violet Hippopotamus and drank five glasses of good wine.
He belongs to the class of simple-hearted, practical, and dull-witted people, prompt in carrying out orders, who like discipline better than anything in the world, and so are convinced that it is their duty to beat people.
I’m not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that’s all...
The Russian loves recalling life, but he does not love living.
He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of the desert because the cross over his grave is visible to caravans thirty-forty miles away and reigns over the wasteland.
Why does this forever gone, irretrievable time, why does it seem brighter, more festive and rich, than it was in reality?
It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with himself.
I am drunk. I usually only drink like this once a month. At such times my audacity and temerity know no bounds. I feel capable of anything. I attempt the most difficult operations and do them magnificently. The most brilliant plans for the future take shape in my head. I am no longer a poor fool of a doctor, but mankind’s greatest benefactor. I evolve my own system of philosophy and all of you seem to crawl at my feet like so many insects or microbes.