My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

There are two men in me--one lives in the full sense of the word, the other reasons and passes judgment on the first. The first will perhaps take leave of you and the world forever in an hour now; and the second . . . the second?

For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth?

Russian ladies, for the most part, cherish only Platonic love, without mingling any thought of matrimony with it; and Platonic love is exceedingly embarrassing.

In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.