“Talent I say is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one’s own powers.”

Everywhere, within man and without, there is devastation, instability, chaos, and evidence of some prolonged rout.

Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber.

In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible — such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.

Only mothers can think of the future – because they give birth to it in their children.

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.

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