“It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.”

We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.

There are passions that it is not for man to choose.

There exists a kind of laughter which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker.

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.

What is stronger in us – passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?

I shall laugh my bitter laugh.

You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.

I saw that I’d get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal- at cards.

They’re thinking of turning the peasant into an educated man. Why, first of all they should make him a good and prosperous farmer and then he’ll learn all that is necessary for him to know.

Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.

Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.

As you pass from the tender years of youth into harsh and embittered manhood, make sure you take with you on your journey all the human emotions! Don’t leave them on the road, for you will not pick them up afterwards!

Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all

The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.

The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral… Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That’s my idea.