Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.

We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.

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.

Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he's something innately superior, something eternal--and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.

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

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 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.