Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is buring?

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.