To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its “pure” form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.
What can you do by killing? Nothing. You kill one dog, the master buys another-that’s all there is to it.
With his own money a person can live as he likes-a ruble that’s your own is dearer than a brother.
Everything which is good in me should be credited to books.
Talent I say is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one’s own powers.
This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!
The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.
Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?
Intellectual force is qualitatively the first and foremost productive force, and concern for its rapid growth should be the ardent concern of all classes.
The poor people are stupid from poverty, and the rich from greed.
Our existence has always and everywhere been tragic, but man has converted these numberless tragedies into works of art. I know of nothing more astonishing or more wonderful than this transformation.
The pleasure of living carries with it the obligation to die.
Much later I realized that Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow – to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy.
Like some wondrous birds out of fairy tales, books sang their songs to me and spoke to me as though communing with one languishing in prison; they sang of the variety and richness of life, of man’s audacity in his strivings towards goodness and beauty.
They destroy lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master – I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov – my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my life-blood, my very life. That’s for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my blood. He bought her a gold wash basin with my blood.
The indifferent pendulum of the clock kept chopping off the seconds of life, calmly and precisely.
I did not speak,” continued Pavel, “about that good and gracious God in whom you believe, but about the God with whom the priests threaten us as with a stick, about the God in whose name they want to force all of us to the evil will of the few.
And he’s direct, clear, firm, like truth itself.
It’s not people, but thoughts, and thoughts are not fleas; you can’t catch them!
Those – – “ – here he flung out a terrible oath – “those people don’t know what their blind hands are sowing. They will know when our power is complete and we begin to mow down their cursed grass. They’ll know it then!