Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.

Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves.

In Russia there is no philosophy, but philosophize everything, even the small fry.

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way.

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.