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

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself

Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

Now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.