“Everyone is striving to unite particulars and find at least some general sense in the general senselessness.”

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we supposed. And we ourselves are, too.”

“In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.”

“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.”

“It's in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.”

“For not only is an odd man "not always" a particular and isolated case, but, on the contrary, it sometimes happens that it is precisely he, perhaps, who bears within himself the heart of the whole, while the other people of his epoch have all for some reason been torn away from it for a time by some kind of flooding wind.”

“Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, she still showed traces of her former beauty and seemed much younger than her years. This is generally true of women who remain serene in spirit, fresh in their impressions, and spontaneously warmhearted right to the edge of old age. One might add that in this way, and only in this way, they retain their beauty in old age too.”