Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.

If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.

To make a face from marble means to remove from the slab everything that is not the face

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!

You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.

These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.