"Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write."

"The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well."

"It’s worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork."

"Pharisaism, obtuseness and tyranny reign not only in the homes of merchants and in jails; I see it in science, in literature, and among youth. I consider any emblem or label a prejudice.... My holy of holies is the human body, health, intellect, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute of freedoms, the freedom from force and falsity in whatever forms they might appear."

"Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be."

"It doesn’t matter that your painting is small. Kopecks are also small, but when a lot are put together they make a ruble. Each painting displayed in a gallery and each good book that makes it into a library, no matter how small they may be, serve a great cause: accretion of the national wealth."

"In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust. <…> You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will… Each hour is precious."

"A man who doesn’t drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man."

"When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace."

"Lermontov died at age twenty-eight and wrote more than have you and I put together. Talent is recognizable not only by quality, but also by the quantity it yields."

"To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards."

"Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?"

"I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity."

"Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? In front of God or, perhaps, in front of the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not in front of people. Among people, one must be conscious of one’s dignity."

"Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels.... They must not be turned into a plaything of one’s mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at."

"The bourgeoisie loves so-called “positive” types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one’s innocence, to be a beast and still be happy."

"There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune."

"If I were asked to choose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all."

"The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles."

"Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat."

"It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand."

"The air of one’s native country is the most healthy air."

"You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question."

"Writers are as jealous as pigeons."

"It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook."

"I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don’t consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura."

"Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; political and literary hypocrites pretend to be eagles. But don't be disconcerted by their aquiline appearance. They are not eagles, but rats or dogs."

"Solomon made a great mistake when he asked for wisdom."

"Whoever sincerely believes that elevated and distant goals are as little use to man as a cow, that “all of our problems” come from such goals, is left to eat, drink, sleep, or, when he gets sick of that, to run up to a chest and smash his forehead on its corner."

"The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness; if it issues not from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing."

"Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life."

"In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides."

"It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person."

"Love is a great thing. It is not by chance that in all times and practically among all cultured peoples love in the general sense and the love of a man for his wife are both called love. If love is often cruel or destructive, the reason lies not in love itself, but in the inequality between people."

"A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog."

"There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science."

"How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works."

"I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious."

"The more refined the more unhappy."

"People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives."

"Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something."

"It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich."

"Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die."

"They say: "In the long run truth will triumph;" but it is untrue."

"When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams."

"Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them."

"If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry."

"Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority."

"As I shall lie in the grave alone, so in fact I live alone."

"I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities."