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

And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.

Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!

Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic.

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.