It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.

Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal.

You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.

The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.