At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where the sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.

if she had ordered me to throw myself down then, I would have done it! If she had said it only as a joke, said it with contempt, spitting on me--even then I would have jumped!

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

Russians alone are able to combine so many opposites in themselves at one and the same time.

Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window