Maxim Gorky

If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.

What I'd like is to meet a man I could take off my hat to and say: "Thank you for having got born, and the longer you live the better.

A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.

To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.

Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.

Truth doesn't always heal a wounded soul.

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.

You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man - Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?

Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent.

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.