Our people may be bad, but they are still our people, and that explains everything.
We ourselves perish when we judge the clergy. Without the clergy, the people died. The clergy protect his soul.
We are born for love. To the extent that we have not given love, to the same extent we suffer on earth. To the extent that we have given love, to the same extent we will be punished in the other world.
Society, those around us, shrink our soul, they don't enrich it. Only the most intimate and rarest sympathy "enriches" him, just being in "good understanding" and of "one thought." Such sympathies you find one or two in your whole life. In them, the soul flourishes. I'm looking for her. And run away from the crowd or avoid it.
Writing is a destiny. The writing is fatum. The writing is a misfortune.
Vice is picturesque, and virtue is so effaced. What horrors are these?
The life of the Russians is also dirty and mediocre, but, in a way, pleasant. The latter you are afraid of losing, because losing it "everything goes to waste". You are afraid of losing something unique and unrepeatable. Maybe it will be even better in the future, but no, you only want this one...
Socialism will pass as disharmony. Any disharmony will disappear once and for all. And socialism is a storm, rain and wind...
Style is the spirit of things.
The essence of prayer is the recognition of your deepest helplessness, your deepest deep mediocrity. Prayer begins where "I cannot"; where "I can," prayer has no place.
Only pain reveals our sublime and holiness. Until we get to pain, there is beauty, goodness, even greatness. But never the sublime or the holy.
What is "the writer"? Abandoned children, forgotten wife and vanity, vanity... An interesting guy.
Paganism - morning, Christianity - evening. It may not be morning, may this be the last evening?
Paganism represents the childhood of mankind, and childhood, in the life of each of us, is his natural paganism. So that we pass "among the ancient gods" and know them instinctively.
In every moment of our life we must strive to look not for what separates us from other people, but for what we have in common.
It is not what man might laugh at or mock that is important, but what he would love, appreciate and accept.
He is always happy who always has before him something which he cannot fully understand, when, always advancing, he knows something more.
The whole problem of education consists in imposing on man not only to do good, but also to revel in that good; not only to work, but also to love his work.
The ultimate wisdom is not in giving, but in the ability to find pleasure in the smallest things.
Doing good things is the way to greatness and if you don't do them then no doubt the day will come when you will have to work for evil and not for good.
Activity is a great thing. If people will confidently do the right thing, they will eventually come to like what they do.
A good deed cannot be done out of hatred; and not out of interest. It is done only out of love.
A valley, a little still water and the rays of the sunset are the simplest things, the most common, but also the dearest.
Life without work is theft, work without art is theft.
The true faith of man is not to give him peace, but power to work.
We should treat knowledge the same way we treat food. We do not live to know, any more than we live to eat.
How often we find it difficult to show mercy wisely... to do good without multiplying evil...
When love and craftsmanship came together, a masterpiece was born.
The wise man always finds support in all things, because his gift is to extract love from everything.
Our moral sentiments have mixed so badly with the world of reason that we can no longer approach one without also addressing the other. The great mind, once distorted, remains forever a curse.