I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco.

I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life.

Countless as the sands of sea are human passions, and not all of them are alike, and all of them, base and noble alike, are at first obedient to man and only later on become his terrible masters.

How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.

Steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?