I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.... Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!

Changeable women are more endurable that monotonous ones; they are sometimes murdered but never deserted.

Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty is an even bigger fool.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.