Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.

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.

I must say, though, that a man who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman's love and who, when that card is trumped, falls to pieces and lets himself go to the dogs -- a fellow like that is not a man, not a male. You say he's unhappy -- you know best. But all the nonsense hasn't been taken out of him yet. I'm sure he really believes he's a smart fellow just because he reads that rag Galignani and saves a muzhik from a flogging once a month.

a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.

Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.