I never started from ideas but always from character.
However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.
What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country’s fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself...
You may live a long while with some people and be on friendly terms with them and never speak openly with them from your soul.
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!