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

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.

Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel

What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?