In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!

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

All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.

I share no man's opinions; I have my own.

I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?