The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.

Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.

Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce.

The true artist is known by what he annexes, and he annexes everything.

I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.

Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.