The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumul….

From here, far away, people seem very good, and that is natural, for in going away into the country we are not hiding from people but from our vanity….

The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; ….

Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it..

I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner t….

Posterity will say as usual: "In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past..

People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, ….

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man..

If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: "Nothing passes away." I believe that nothing passes away without l….

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling..

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism..

If you want to work on your art, work on your life..

You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating ….

I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more..

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower..

There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent..

Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. ….

The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth..

After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the ….

Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is….

It's not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul..