The first love is so fragrant that it forgets the difference between the sexes, being also a passionate friendship.
Under the influence of the petty bourgeoisie everything changed. Chivalrous honor was replaced by accounting honesty, elegant manners, ceremonial manners, politeness, affected character, pride, suspicion.
Happiness is not complete if there is disorder; complete happiness is calm as a sea in calm summer weather.
Progress is an inherent property of conscious development that has never ceased; it is the active memory and perfection of people through social life.
To preach from the pulpit, to charm from the platform, to teach from the pulpit is much easier than raising a child.
Forgiving enemies is a beautiful deed; but an even more beautiful, more human deed is the understanding of enemies, because understanding is also forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation.
Vain answers kill justified questions and distract the mind from the given situation.
Naturally, people are selfish, because they are personalities; how can they be themselves if they have no clear consciousness of his personality? We are selfish, and therefore we seek independence, well-being, recognition of our rights, we look forward to love, we seek activity, and we cannot deny others, without apparent contradiction, the same rights.
Waste carries a limit in itself. It ends with the last ruble and the last loan. Avarice is boundless and always at the beginning of its realm; after ten million, she begins, sighing, to collect the eleventh.
Religion is the essential bridle for the masses, a massive intimidation of the simple, a screen of colossal dimensions that prevents the people from seeing clearly what is happening on earth, making them look up to heaven.
The Russian government, like providence in reverse, improves not the future, but the past.
The most cruel and relentless of all people, prone to hatred and persecution, are the ultra-religious.
The word "selfishness", like the word "love", is too general: there can be both a base love and a supreme selfishness. The egoism of an evolved and rational man is noble, representing his love for science, art, for his neighbor, for a larger life, for independence; the love of a limited savage, even the love of Othello, is supreme selfishness.
Cohabitation is a terrible thing in itself, which has ruined half the marriages. Living closely together, people are too close to each other, see each other in too much detail, too piecemeal and, unnoticed, tear petal by petal, all the flowers of the aura that surrounds a personality with poetry and grace.
Justice means nothing to a man who is not possessed by a passion.
Old age has its beauty, which does not exude passion and drive, but peace and tranquility...
Suffering, pain are a call to battle, they are the wake-up call of life, drawing attention to a danger.
Terrible crimes have terrible consequences.
The talent of education, the talent of patient love is rarer than all the others. It cannot be replaced either by mother's love, no matter how ardent, nor by dialectics, no matter how strong, argumentative.
The theater is the supreme court in solving life's problems.
Only love gives rise to something lasting and alive, and pride is barren, because it needs nothing but itself.
Ask to be given, instead of love for humanity, a hatred against all that lies in the way and prevents you from moving forward.
There are no difficult subjects, but only a bunch of things that we simply do not know, even more, that we know poorly, incoherently, fragmentarily, even erroneously. This false information keeps us in place longer and deviates us more than what we don't know.
Respect for the truth is the beginning of wisdom.
There is no such thing as chronic happiness, just like there is no ice that won't melt.
A private life, which knows nothing of what passes beyond the threshold of its own house, however fulfilled it may be, is still poor.
A man without a heart is a cold thinking machine, without family, without friends, without country; the heart is a beautiful and indispensable foundation of spiritual development.
Man cannot refuse to participate in a human act done near him; he must act in his place and in his time—this is his universal vocation.
Man is called into the social-historical world, morally free and positively active; he has not only understanding but also will, which can be called positive reason, creative reason.
A man possessed by a strong passion is a terrible egotist.