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.

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?

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.

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

I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.