We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it.

Jail doesn't teach anyone to do good, nor Siberia, but a man-yes! A man can teach another man to do good-believe me!

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man - Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?

Even a bad man is better than a good book.

There is no one on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there is no one so miserable as he who accepts them.