To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me – a long, long road without a goal...
Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this – Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.
He was the soul of politeness to everyone – to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.
Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he’s something innately superior, something eternal – and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.
Tempered, gradual animation, the methodical restrain of sensations and energies, the equilibrium of sickness and health in each creature – this is nature’s essence, its immutable law, this is what it’s based on and what it adheres to.
As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there’s no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better – but you keep working anyway.
Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.
What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that’s all!
Death’s an old story, but new for each person.
What I’m thinking is: here I am, lying under a haystack... The tiny little place I occupy is so small in relation to the rest of space where I am not and where it’s none of my business; and the amount of time which I’ll succeed in living is so insignificant by comparison with the eternity where I haven’t been and never will be... And yet in this atom, in this mathematical point, the blood circulates, the brain works and even desires something as well... What sheer ugliness! What sheer nonsense!
Poetry is the language of the gods. I love poems myself. But poetry is not only in poems; it is diffused everywhere, it is around us. Look at those trees, that sky on all sides there is the breath of beauty, and of life, and where there is life and beauty, there is poetry also.
No! I cannot love people whom I find that I look down on. I need someone who would himself master me, but then, goodness me, I shall never come across anyone like that. I will never fall into anybody’s clutches, never, never.
Words indeed have been my ruin; they have consumed me, and to the end I cannot be free of them.
A nihilist is a man who doesn’t acknowledge any authorities, who doesn’t accept a single principle on faith, no matter how much that principle may be surrounded by respect.
First we’ve got to clear the ground.
It seemed to us that all people to a greater or lesser degree belong to one of these two types, that almost every one of us resembles either Don Quixote or Hamlet.