Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.

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

The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.

Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don't have far to go, either.

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.

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