We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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.
That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
I want everything or nothing. A life for a life, taking one and giving up another without hesitation and beyond recall. Or else better have nothing!
You are an old pig!’one of them said to the other. ‘And that is worse than being a young one.
A man’s capable of understanding anything – how the ether vibrates, and what’s going on in the sun – but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he’s incapable of understanding.
And was it his destined part / Only one moment in his life / To be close to your heart?
It seemed to us that all people to a greater or lesser degree belong to one of these two types, that almost every one of us resembles either Don Quixote or Hamlet.
that’s all the stars do, look at lovers – that’s why they’re so beautiful
To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what’s is so painful you can’t sense your powers leaving you. It’s hard for an old man to ensure such blows!
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.
It’s no good writing if God hasn’t given you talent. People will just laugh.
Weak people never put an end to things themselves. They always wait for the end.
Sentimental outbreaks are like liquorice; when first you suck it, it’s not bad, but afterwards it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.
was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come.
People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly.
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.
In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country’s fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!