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

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

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

Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you.... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything.

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

I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor's nature.

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