What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.

We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we're barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.

Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.

Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.

He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.