“All human beings have gray little souls-and they all want to rouge them up.”

One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn’t marry a girl of twenty.

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.

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.

You will not drown the truth in seas of blood.

Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.

Every new time will give its law.

God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.

Many contemporary authors drink more than they write.

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?

Everything which is good in me should be credited to books.

We ever long for visions of beauty, We ever dream of unknown worlds.

Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?

Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say— to them silence is simple and easy.

With his own money a person can live as he likes-a ruble that’s your own is dearer than a brother.

The higher goal a person pursues, the quicker his ability develops, and the more beneficial he will become to the society. I believe for sure that this is also a truth.

Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?

Let yourself go a little wild, a little rough around through the edges; the human spirit wasn’t meant for carefully-curated perfection.

Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk.

A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.

A person with a clear purpose will make progress, even on the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress, even on the smoothest road.

My life is simple and rough.

I’m a harsh critic of the status quo.

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.