Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time.

First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.

...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends.

Shall I describe the happiness it gave me to go into the classroom and pick up the chalk? ... It seemed to me the supreme, heartbreaking happiness to enter a classroom carrying a register as that bell rang, and start a lesson with the mysterious air of one about to unfold wonders.

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

The central government possesses no plan of finding the way out of this blind alley.