The temerity to believe in nothing.

The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.

Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don't have far to go, either.

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!

Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.

To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'