“There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.”

There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.

It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there’ll come a time when you’ll start asking just for a crust.

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.

I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.

We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we’re barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.

I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.

That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.

I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.

In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country’s fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!

The temerity to believe in nothing.

I’ve become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it’s difficult to tame the beast in oneself.

Significance is sweet.

All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sorts of difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

Because it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together,

There is something about believing in God, that makes God willing to pass over a million people just to anoint you. I believe God will always turn out to meet you on a special line if you dare to believe Him.

Remember, ‘Even this will pass away.’

A dogma recognized throughout antiquity… (that) the soul expiates its sins in the darkness of the infernal regions and… afterwards… passes into new bodies, there to undergo new trials.

If I could pass along anything that my mother or my sisters taught me, I feel like my kids would be very well off.

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing.

Many bills and many amendments that get passed get passed by a voice vote. They don’t actually get voted in by roll call, meaning all 435 members don’t vote on many of the bills.

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.