They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

You look boldly ahead; isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future; because life is still hidden from your young eyes.

We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers.

You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.

He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same.

To live simply to die is by no means amusing, but to live with the knowledge that you will die before your time, that's really is idiotic