"My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole."

"Only through suffering can we find ourselves."

"What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead."

"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most."

"To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's."

"To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her."

"If God does not exist, then everything is permissible."

"Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel."

"Wealth is the number of things one can do without."

"To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise."

"My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so."

"I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped."

"The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight."

"Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness."

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

"Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification."

"I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness."

"There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home."

"The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul."

"From a hundred rabbits you can't make a horse."

"I've always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I've been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I've looked away and never could look people straight in the eye."

"The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence"

"Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice."

"Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound."

"If you can put the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my acts?' then you are responsible."

"Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?"

"To love another person is to see them as God intended them to be."

"They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?"

"Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves."

"Paradise is hidden in each one of use, it is concealed within me too, right now, and if I wish, it will come for me in reality, tomorrow even, and for the rest of my life."

"I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!"

"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."

"If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing love"

"Men like to to count their troubles; few calculate their happiness."

"Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams."

"I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness."

"The world will be saved by beauty."

"A hundred suspicions don't make a proof."

"The most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…"

"May you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?"

"Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything."

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others."

"I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living."

"The Russian soul is a dark place."

"Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering..."

"Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man."

"One must love life before loving its meaning ... yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning can console us."

"I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus..."

"She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age."

"A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals."