“A woman can only become a man’s friend in three stages: first she’s an agreeable acquaintance, then a mistress and only after that a friend.”

“A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.”

“All my friends and relatives have always taken a condescending tone to my writing, and never ceased urging me in a friendly way not to give up real work for the sake of scribbling.”

“Not only after two or three centuries, but in a million years, life will still be as it was; life does not change, it remains for ever, following its own laws which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, you will never find out. Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly and not know why or where. They fly and will continue to fly, whatever philosophers come to life among them; they may philosophize as much as they like, only they will fly....”

“He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.”

“Only one who loves can remember so well.”

“And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.”