He who laughs does not get angry, because to laugh means to forgive.
Woman's love gives man momentary pleasures and harnesses him to eternal obligations, or at least to lifelong troubles.
In admiration of how reform transformed Russia's past, I lost sight of how Russia's past transformed reform.
People live idolatrously towards ideals, and when they lack ideals, they idealize idols.
Conceited men love power, ambitious men love influence, conceited men seek both, thoughtful men despise both.
You can bow to people who believe in Russia, but not to the object of their faith.
Man sees in every woman what he wants to make of her, and usually he makes of her something she does not want to be.
The man behaves with the woman like a chemist with his laboratory: he observes in her processes that are difficult for him to understand, but which he himself generates.
The man loves the woman, most often, because she also loves him; the woman loves the man, most often, because he admires her.
The man loves the woman, as much as he can love; the woman loves the man as much as she wants to love him. That is why the man usually loves the woman more than she deserves, and the woman wants to love more men than she is capable of loving.
Men usually love women they respect; a woman usually respects only the men she loves. That's why man often loves women who don't deserve to be loved, and woman often respects men who don't deserve to be respected.
The man falls to his knees in front of a woman, only to help her fall.
The man listens with his ears, and the woman with her eyes, the first to understand what is said to him, the second to please the one who speaks to him.
Music is a sound composition that gives us an appetite for life, just as well-known pharmaceutical compositions give us an appetite for food.
We are inferior organisms in universal zoology: we continue to move even after we have lost our heads.
One must find meaning even in nonsense: this is the unpleasant obligation of the historian, in a clever thing any philosopher can find meaning.
Sowers talk so intelligently about the foundation of their lives that it seems what they are standing on is smarter than what they are talking about.
Science is often confused with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not only knowledge, but also a consciousness, namely the ability to use knowledge properly.
Our history follows our calendar: every century, we fall one day behind the rest of the world.
Our sympathy with the religious ancients is not moral, but only artistic: we only admire their sentiments, not sharing them, as lascivious old men admire young maidens whom they are unable to love.
Let's not confuse the theater with the church, because it is more difficult to turn a circus into a church than to turn a church into a circus.
Don't start a business whose outcome is out of your hands.
Some women are smarter than other stupid ones, only because they realize their own stupidity. The difference between one and the other lies in the fact that some consider themselves intelligent, remaining stupid, and others recognize themselves as stupid, thus not becoming intelligent.
Nothing is more useless than judging or treating corpses: they must be buried.
Ritual is a religious ash: it protects the rest of the religious pyre from the cold of life outside.
He's stupid because he's so handsome, and he wouldn't be so handsome if he were less stupid.
She is looking for her husband in every man, because she has not found a man in her husband.
Sincerity is not credibility, just the bad habit of thinking out loud.
Peter I was ready to disturb any kind of order to prevent disorder.
Writers, like parents, like to endow their characters with qualities they themselves lack. That is why Maupassant's characters are always stupid, and Tolstoy's - intelligent.