"When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself."

"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."

"Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time."

"We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating."

"[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh."

"Love is a scandal of the personal sort."

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

"Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf."

"The more refined the more unhappy."

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

"A woman can only become a man’s friend in three stages: first, she’s an agreeable acquaintance, then a mistress, and only after that a friend."

"If only one tooth aches, rejoice that not all of them ache.... If your wife betrays you, be glad that she betrayed only you and not the nation."

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

"Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it."

"At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people."

"Once you’ve married, be strict but just with your wife, don’t allow her to forget herself, and when a misunderstanding arises, say: “Don’t forget that I made you happy.”"

"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."

"Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric."

"By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations."

"One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven."

"Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck."

"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."

"A fiancé is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other."

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

"It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it."

"When he reached the street where the school was, he would feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman, he would turn round and say: "You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone." She would stand still and look after him fixedly till he had disappeared at the school-gate. Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been so deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously, so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and the big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why? Who can tell why?"

"Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher’s stone."

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

"Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal."

"Ariadne's voice, her walk, her hat, even her footprints on the sandy bank where she used to angle for gudgeon, filled me with delight and a passionate hunger for life."

"Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs."

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

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

"Ariadne was herself aware that she was lacking in something. She was vexed and more than once I saw her cry. Another time--can you imagine it?--all of a sudden she embraced me and kissed me. It happened in the evening on the river-bank, and I saw by her eyes that she did not love me, but was embracing me from curiosity, to test herself and to see what came of it. And I felt dreadful. I took her hands and said to her in despair: "These caresses without love cause me suffering!" - "What a queer fellow you are!" she said with annoyance, and walked away."

"Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts."

"You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!"

"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."

"Seeing me, she uttered a cry of joy, and probably, if we had not been in the park, would have thrown herself on my neck. She pressed my hands warmly and laughed; and I laughed too and almost cried with emotion. Questions followed, of the village, of my father, whether I had seen her brother, and so on. She insisted on my looking her straight in the face, and asked if I remembered the gudgeon, our little quarrels, the picnics. . . ."

"The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others."

"At home in the country I used to feel ashamed to meet the peasants when I was fishing or on a picnic party on a working day; here too I was ashamed at the sight of the footmen, the coachmen, and the workmen who met us. It always seemed to me they were looking at me and thinking: "Why are you doing nothing?""

"I became her lover. For a month anyway I was like a madman, conscious of nothing but rapture. To hold in one's arms a young and lovely body, with bliss to feel her warmth every time one waked up from sleep, and to remember that she was there--she, my Ariadne!-- ... I realised, as before, that Ariadne did not love me. But she wanted to be really in love, she was afraid of solitude"

"The chief, so to say fundamental, characteristic of the woman was an amazing duplicity. She was continually deceitful every minute, apparently apart from any necessity, as it were by instinct, by an impulse such as makes the sparrow chirrup and the cockroach waggle its antennae. She was deceitful with me, with the footman, with the porter, with the tradesmen in the shops, with her acquaintances; not one conversation, not one meeting, took place without affectation and pretense."

"I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it’s tobacco, then let it be tobacco."

"The sea has neither meaning nor pity."

"Look here, my good girl . . . sit down and listen. We must part! The fact is, I don't want to live with you any longer." ... She said nothing in answer to the student's words, only her lips began to tremble. "You know we should have to part sooner or later, anyway," . . "You're a nice, good girl, and not a fool . . ." Anyuta put on her coat again, in silence wrapped up her embroidery in paper ... "Why are you crying?" asked Klotchkov. . . . "You are a strange girl, really. . . . Why, you know we shall have to part. We can't stay together for ever." She had gathered together all her belongings, and turned to say good-bye to him, and he felt sorry for her. "Shall I let her stay on here another week?" he thought. "She really may as well stay, and I'll tell her to go in a week;" and vexed at his own weakness, he shouted to her roughly: "Come, why are you standing there? If you are going, go; and if you don't want to, take off your coat and stay! You can stay!"

"I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them."