A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.
In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish that is their strength.
There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.
Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is.
Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck.
That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
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.