Homeopathic doses are perhaps the strongest.
For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.
The meanest and most hateful thing about money is that it even gives one talent.
I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn’t suffered.
I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory .
My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.
To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.
I’ve long stopped worrying about who invented whom – God man or man God.
Beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.
The Golden Age is the most implausible of all dreams. But for it men have given up their life and strength; for the sake of it prophets have died and been slain; without it the people will not live and cannot die.
Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good.
It’s in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.
Man has not the right to turn aside and heed not what is happening in the world around him, and this I maintain on moral grounds of the highest order.
We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive?
Let us first fulfill Christ’s injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.
To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.
It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.
But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.