“To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.”

Everyone needs help from everyone else.

Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don’t have far to go, either.

In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights – the right to swear and curse at your fate!

Illness isn’t the only thing that spoils the appetite.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.

Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.

The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?

Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.

Take what you can yourself, and don’t let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.

I agree with no one’s opinion. I have some of my own.

Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.

A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.

Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.

I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.