Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic.
If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.
An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.
You only have to start a job of work to realize how few decent, honest folk there are about.
It's very hard, feeling that you're no more than a piece of unwanted furniture in this world.
Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.
When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'
To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.
Nothing better forges a bond of love, friendship or respect than common hatred toward something.
Posterity will say as usual: "In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past.
It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.
People are far more sincere and good-humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.
Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves.
A writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.
A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.
A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.
The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.
In my head there is a whole army of people asking to be let out and waiting for the word of command.
To believe in God is not hard. Inquisitors, Byron and Arakcheev believed in Him. No, believe in man!
For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.
Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.
I promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't in my sky every day...
Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life.
People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people.
It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person.
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.
If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you - it will come out of that wall.
It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.
Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.
The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.
Passion must be concealed in a society where cold reserve and indifference are the signs of good breeding.
People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.
When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.
Ah, Caviar! I keep on eating it, but can never get my fill. Like olives. It's a lucky thing it's not salty.
I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.
Indeed, in Russia there is a terrible poverty of facts, and a terrible abundance of reflections of all sorts.
Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?
Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.
Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.
The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.
One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.
And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.
I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest.