I was afraid of looking into my heart…afraid of thinking seriously about anything…I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.
Nature creates while destroying, and doesn’t care whether it creates or destroys as long as life isn’t extinguished, as long as death doesn’t lose its rights.
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.
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.
Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.
Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he’s something innately superior, something eternal–and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.
Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.
