The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger - a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...

Not only after two or three centuries, but in a million years, life will still be as it was; life does not change, it remains for ever, following its own laws which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, you will never find out. Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly and not know why or where. They fly and will continue to fly, whatever philosophers come to life among them; they may philosophize as much as they like, only they will fly.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

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

It's very hard, feeling that you're no more than a piece of unwanted furniture in this world.

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