“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

“Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!”

“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”

“To get rid of an enemy one must love him. ”

“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”

“Add your light to the sum of light.”

“Life is fragile and absurd.

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.”

“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.”

“The man who ten years earlier and one year later was considered a bandit and outlaw is sent a two-day sail from France, to an island given into his possession, with his guards and several million, which are paid to him for some reason.”

“There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.”

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.”

*"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known happiness!”

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”