Sentimental outbreaks are like liquorice; when first you suck it, it’s not bad, but afterwards it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.
Sometimes little things happen which seem nothing at all, but they hurt.
I gave myself up to fruitless speculation, and was always looking for secluded places. I became particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I used to climb, I remember, on to the high wall, settle myself on it and sit there, a youth afflicted by such misery, solitude and grief that I would be overcome with self-pity. How I reveled in these melancholy feelings – how I adored them.
Weak people never put an end to things themselves. They always wait for the end.
She found it sinful and expensive to have sugar in her tea, although she herself never spent a penny on anything.
Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth!
A man’s capable of understanding anything – how the ether vibrates, and what’s going on in the sun – but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he’s incapable of understanding.
Know how to will, and you will be free, and will lead.
It’s amazing how man still believes in words. For example, if you call him a fool and don’t beat him, he’ll be wretched. Call him a genius and don’t give him any money – he’ll be quite satisfied.
This is the only thing that makes life worth living. If you have succeeded in doing something you wanted to do, something that seemed impossible – well, then, make the most of it, with all your heart, to the very brim.
Beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy – that slow poison.
A man is capable of understanding everything – how the ether vibrates and what happens on the sun. But to understand how another man can blow his nose differently from the way he blows his own is something beyond his capability.
Strange things happen on this earth: you can live a long while with someone and be on the friendliest of terms, and yet you’ll never once talk openly with him, from the depths of your soul; while with someone else you may scarcely have met, at one glance, whether you to him or he to you, just as in a confessional, you’ll blurt out the story of your life.
You may feed the wolf as you will; he has always a hankering for the woods.
Oh we have hard times to live through, those of us who are born spectators.
Everything on earth – both the good things and the bad things – is not given to a man according to his just deserts, but as a result of certain as yet unknown, yet logical, laws which I won’t even undertake to suggest to you, although it sometimes seems to me that I feel them as through a glass darkly.
I want everything or nothing. A life for a life, taking one and giving up another without hesitation and beyond recall. Or else better have nothing!
I? Believe me, Zinaida Alexandrovna, that whatever you did, however much you make me suffer, I shall love you and adore you to the end of my days.
Victims of misfortune are quick to sense another of their kind from a distance, but in old age they rarely become friends, which is in no way surprising: they have nothing to share together – not even hope.
Mad people all live a long time – you know, every grief has its good side.