Belonging to oneself – the whole essence of life lies in that.
All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.
I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.
That’s what children are for – that their parents may not be bored.
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve...
In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn’t know art, just as it doesn’t know freedom, just as it doesn’t know goodness.
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights – the right to swear and curse at your fate!
No matter how often you knock at nature’s door, she won’t answer in words you can understand – for Nature is dumb. She’ll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn’t expect a song.
There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.
The past was a dream wasn’t it? And who ever remembers dreams?
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
The temerity to believe in nothing.
To tell about a drunken muzhik’s beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the ‘woman question.’
What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.