My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?

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It's a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions - like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.

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It's a lucky man who leaves early from life's banquet, before he's drained to the dregs his goblet - full of wine; yes, it's a lucky man who has not read life's novel to the end, but has been wise enough to part with it abruptly - like me with my Onegin.

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Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

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Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

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I’ve lived to bury my desires, And see my dreams corrode with rust; Now all that’s left are fruitless fires That burn my empty heart to dust.

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I want to understand you, I study your obscure language.

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Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.

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Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.

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I was not born to amuse the Tsars.

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