To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.

God knows what is in me in place of me.

But of course that is because I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all? Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself?

I sit up talking till daybreak with the young people and we have almost Athenian evenings, Athenian, I mean, only in their intellectual subtlety and refinement.

The game's not worth the candle.

The flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

In St. Petersburg, the most abstract and intentional city on the entire globe.

Talk nonsense but talk your own nonsense and I'll kiss you for it.

For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.