“I was not born to amuse the Tsars.”

Please, never despise the translator. He’s the mailman of human civilization.

Sad that our finest aspiration, Our freshest dreams and meditations, In swift succession should decay, Like Autumn leaves that rot away.

I’ve lived to bury my desires, And see my dreams corrode with rust; Now all that’s left are fruitless fires That burn my empty heart to dust.

Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife)

Don’t be sad, don’t be angry, if life deceives you! Submit to your grief – your time for joy will come, believe me.

I do not like Moscow life. You live here not as you want to live, but as old women want you to.

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane.

With womankind, the less we love them, the easier they become to charm.

Thus people–so it seems to me– Become good friends from sheer ennui.

Moscow, how many strains are fusing in that one sound, for Russian hearts! What store of riches it imparts!

Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.

Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent.

If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.

Then came a moment of renaissance, I looked up – you again are there, A fleeting vision, the quintessence Of all that`s beautiful and rare.

Unrequited love is not an affront to man but raises him.

It is better to have dreamed a thousand dreams that never were than never to have dreamed at all.

All the photographers were trying to just get me off, which was hilarious. But it was very, very amusing.