Nature doesn't ask your permission; it doesn't care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You're obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well.

We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.

I don’t understand anything...and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact...If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact.

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.

But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!

I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness.

All people seem to be divided into'ordinary'and 'extraordinary'. The ordinary people must lead a life of strict obedience and have no right to transgress the law because?theyare ordinary.Whereas the extraordinary people have the right to commit any crime they like and transgress the law in any way just because they happen to be extraordinary.