If you ever have need of my life, come and take it.

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?

Write only of what is important and eternal.

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

In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.

I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.