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!
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.
Significance is sweet...
I’ve become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it’s difficult to tame the beast in oneself.
Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga.
I share no man’s opinions; I have my own.
Illness isn’t the only thing that spoils the appetite.
Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.
Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.