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

"The Russian soul is a dark place."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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…"

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

"The world will be saved by beauty."

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

"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."

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

"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"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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

"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?"

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

"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."

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

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