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.

My love is like a stone tied round my neck; it's dragging me down to the bottom; but I love my stone. I can't live without it.

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!

One must speak about serious things seriously.

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.

Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.

Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.