No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.

Anna Petrovna (to Shabelsky): You can't make a simple joke without an injection of venom. You are a poisonous man. Joking apart, Count, you're very poisonous. It's hideously boring to live with you. You're always grumpy, complaining, you find everyone bad, good for nothing. Tell me frankly, Count, did you ever speak well of anyone?

I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.