"There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon."

"Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience."

"Writers are as jealous as pigeons."

"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."

"Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else’s opinion and without the fear of hindering one another."

"Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state."

"I don’t know why one can’t chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue."

"The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships."

"My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist."

"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."

"An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes."

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

"I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands."

"I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written."

"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."

"Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material."

"Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress."

"Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure."

"Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don’t know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hard and tortuous to write a bad one."

"When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is."

"Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it."

"When a person doesn’t understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn’t search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn’t understand."

"I drank so much in Peter that Russia should be proud of me!"

"In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments."

"I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me."

"One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled to old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature’s charge and all progress hinges upon it."

"He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others’ successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs."

"All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity."

"When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean—that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses—that is science."

"How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything."

"If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him."

"Our self-esteem and conceit are European, but our culture and actions are Asiatic."

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

"Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like."

"We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past.""

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is."

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

"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."

"The more refined the more unhappy."

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

"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."

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

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