Quotes

“He had no craving for truth, and had not sought it;spellbound by vice and lying, his conscience had slept or been silent. Like a stranger, like an alien from another planet, he had taken no part in the common life of men, and had been indifferent to their sufferings, their ideas, their religion, their sciences, their strivings, and their struggles. He had not said one good word, not written one line that was not useless and vulgar; he had not done his fellows one ha'p'orth of service, but had eaten their bread, drunk their wine, seduced their wives, lived on their thoughts, and to justify his contemptible, parasitic life in their eyes and his own, he had always tried to assume an air of being higher and better than they. Lies, lies...”

“He had cast out of heaven his dim star; it had fallen, and its track was lost in the darkness of night. It would never return to the sky again, because life was given only once and never came a second time. If he could have turned back the days and years of the past, he would have replaced the falsity with truth, the idleness with work, the boredom with happiness; he would have given back purity to those whom he had robbed of it. He would have found God and goodness, but that was as impossible as to put back the fallen star into the sky, and because it was impossible he was in despair.”

“God is the same for all men, only men are different.”

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

“Do you see that tree? It is dead but it still sways in the wind with the others."

“Being in love shows a person who he should be.”

“And the man who seeks salvation in change of place like a migrating bird would find nothing anywhere, for all the world is alike to him.”

“Wisdom... comes not from age, but from education and learning.”

“When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith."

“We should show life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams.”

“To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.”

“The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.”

Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make?

What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.

How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how hard it is in life!

To a heart transformed by love, it is a mandolin.

Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they’ll find a means to be happy.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

The cherry orchard is now mine!... I bought the estate on which my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even permitted in the kitchen.

Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.