Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.

It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.

In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.

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!

Love isn't actually a feeling at all--it's an illness, a certain condition of body and soul.... Usually it takes possession of someone without his permission, all of a sudden, against his will--just like cholera or a fever.

I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.

The temerity to believe in nothing.