Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it

A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.

I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their plowing of the soil. The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a double-bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: 'Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.'