27 quotes found
“The Russian soul is a dark place.”
“Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.”
“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”
“Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a mans done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!”
“We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.”
“Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.”
“How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds!”
“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and were both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
“Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ev...”
“Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?”
“It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he...”
“The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love. ”
“Children can be told anythinganything. I've always been struck by seeing how little grown-up people understand children, how little parents even understand their own children. Nothing should be con...”
“Dont let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
“The repugnance to what must ensue almost immediately, and the uncertainty, were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea, 'What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to retur...”
“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.”
“God has such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby's face.”
“Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don't work too much, either.”
“Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it...An...”
“There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if ...”