Any love is true and beautiful in its own way, only if it is in the heart, and not in the head.
There are all kinds of people and there are all kinds of passions. Well, in one, all the passion, all the pathos of his nature lies in his cold anger, and he is intelligent, talented, and even healthy only when he bites.
All dignity, all power are calm precisely because they are confident in themselves.
The highest and most sacred interest of society is its own well-being, distributed equally to each of its members.
Abominable is he that praiseth himself; but disgusting is also the man without the consciousness of some power or quality of his own.
Where there is neither complete sincerity nor complete trust, where at least something remains hidden, there is not and cannot be talk of friendship.
In the flow of time, only that which does not contain a strong grain of life dies, and therefore does not deserve to live.
It is foolish to open a sea chart to cross a pond with a canoe.
Humanism is the love of people developed through awareness and education.
The essence is not in the word, but in the tone with which the word is spoken.
For love you need rational content, just as you need oil for fire.
There is nothing more pleasing to base natures than to avenge their own nothingness by throwing the mud of their convictions and opinions on all that is holy and great.
Dramatic poets create actors.
My friend is the one to whom I can tell everything.
Friendship, like love, is a rose of a gorgeous color, with a delightful aroma, but with prickly thorns.
If a choice in love were made only by will and mind, then love would not be a feeling, but a passion. The presence of an element of spontaneity is noticeable even in the most thoughtful love, because out of several equally worthy people, only one is chosen, and this choice is based on the involuntary attraction of the heart.
If the purpose of our life consisted only in our personal happiness, and our personal happiness consisted only in love, then life would indeed be a dreary desert... But praise eternal reason, praise providence care! For man there is the great world of life, apart from the inner world of the heart—the world of historical contemplation and social activity—that great world where a thought becomes a deed, and a high feeling becomes a feat... And happy is he who he was not a silent spectator, watching this noisy ocean of life…
If so far mankind has achieved a lot, it means that it has to achieve even more soon. Humanity has already begun to understand that it is humanity: soon it will really want to become humanity. There are many kinds of education and development, and each of them is important in itself, but above all these must be moral education.
The desire for death brings out the most false and illusory state of mind.
A wife is not a mistress, but a friend and a companion of our life, and we must accustom ourselves in time to the thought of loving her even when she is an old woman, but also when she is an old woman.
To love is to feel and to think, to suffer and to be happy, any other kind of life is the same as death.
Of all the bad habits that show the lack of solid education and the excesses of ignorance, the worst is not calling a spade a spade.
Of all the great critics, the most brilliant and infallible is time.
Of all kinds of fame, the most flattering, grandest, and most incorruptible is popular fame.
Of all human passions, after self-love, the most powerful and ferocious is the love of power.
Man's individuality naturally does not tolerate alienation and loneliness and seeks sympathy and trust from its fellows.
Art without a thought, like a man without a soul, is a corpse.
Truth is above men and need not fear them.
True morality grows from the heart, aided by the bright rays of reason. Its measure is not given by words but by practical activities.
Truly human love can only be based on mutual respect for human dignity, and not just on a caprice of feelings or a whim of the heart.