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.

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

Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man - we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling.