When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time

Before we can study the central issues of life today, we must destroy the prejudices and fallacies born of previous centuries.

Man recognizes that he will not die, only when he recognizes that he was never born, but always has been, is, and will be.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.

So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair!