Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

To strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering -- that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.

A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.

No, evidently habit means a lot. The devil knows what habit can do to a person.

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.