top of page
"Anna Petrovna: Do you know what, Kolya? Try and sing, laugh, get angry, as you once did... You stay in, we'll laugh and drink fruit liqueur and we'll drive away your depression in a flash. I'll sing if you like. Or else let's go and sit in the dark in your study as we used to, and you'll tell me about your depression... You have such suffering eyes. I'll look into them and cry, and we'll both feel better."
Standard
Customized
More

"Marriage is a sacred-commitment."
Author Name
Personal Development

"A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards."
Author Name
Personal Development

"We are all connected in spirit, in love and in faith."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Parent greatest gift to their children is their bond of love."
Author Name
Personal Development

"It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Those who don't care about the positive side of you, are too dangerous to have on your side."
Author Name
Personal Development

"They said, "You'll never find someone like me again!" I thanked them for wishing me well."
Author Name
Personal Development

"In some cases, it is the woman's stomach-not her heart-that has left her man for another."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Try not to be the kind of friend who only makes friends when in desperate need of financial help."
Author Name
Personal Development

"The key to every human heart is love."
Author Name
Personal Development
More

"The sufferings which may be observed nowadays - they are so widespread and so vast - but people speak nevertheless about a certain moral improvement which society has achieved."
Society

"Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!"
Philosophy

"My own experience is that once a story has been written one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If in the first chapter you say there is a gun hanging on the wall you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story."
Writing

"As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial."
Philosophy

"Conciseness is the sister of talent."
Creativity

"The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them."
Creativity

"Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life... I am destroyed, irretrievably!"
Psychology

"Science and art,... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,... then they only complicate and encumber life."
Knowledge

"Flies purify the air, and plays--the morals."
Ethics

"If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless mediocrity! returned a bad story to Makar recently is know to the whole district and has provoked mockery, long conversations and indignation, while Makar Denisych is already being referred to as old Makarka. If someone does not write the way required, they never try to explain what is wrong, but just say: 'That bastard has gone and written another load of rubbish!"
Writing
bottom of page