I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.

Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.

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

I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.

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

Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.

Only one thing bothered me: at this very moment, as they say, of inexplicable bliss there would be a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach and my abdomen would be assailed by a melancholy, cold shivering. In the end I couldn't abide such happiness and ran away.