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.
I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life.
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.
Love is a scandal of the personal sort.
It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.
Life on earth is inconceivable without trees.
It’s immoral to steal, but you can take things.
My mistress has come home; at last I’ve seen her. Now I’m ready to die.
A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter.
Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read – my own or other people’s works – it all seems to me not short enough.
The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth.
Life has gone by as if I never lived.
What’s the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!
You look boldly ahead; isn’t it only that you don’t see or divine anything terrible in the future; because life is still hidden from your young eyes.
A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.
In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don’t seem to understand what I say.