What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

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

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!

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?

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.

I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.