“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”

“I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.”

“Yes, Lise. You see, your question whether we do not despise that unhappy man by dissecting his soul was the question of a person who has suffered a lot. I'm afraid I don't know how to put it properly, but a person to whom such questions occur is himself capable of suffering.”

“They were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew that they would become unhappy.”

“But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.”

“Listen, Kolya, by the way, you are going to be a very unhappy man in your life...But on the whole you will bless life all the same.”