I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.

And I saw myselt just as I was now fifteen years hence, only grown older, is the same room, living the same sort of solitary life, with the same Matryona, who had not grown a bit wiser in all those years.

All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.

The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

I want to suffer so that I may love.

Forgive me... for my love -for ruining you with my love.

There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you.

I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but to give everything its due, two and two make five is also a very fine thing.

There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

Times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not only predictable, but desirable. They mean growth. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters most.

By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

Know that I've forgotten precisely nothing; but I've driven it all out of my head for a time, even the memories -- until I've radically improved my circumstances. Then...then you'll see, I'll rise from the dead!

I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky -- that's all it is. It's not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with one's stomach.

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings of what? Of the truth , for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes , have seen it in all its glory .

He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly.

We're originals...they should put us all under glass and show us to people, me first, ten kopecks for admission.