Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

Cabbage soup and barley. They're Russia's national food. Both excellent in their way, but a shade monotonous.

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane.

I do not like Moscow life. You live here not as you want to live, but as old women want you to.

Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family.

My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?

I am married and happy. My only wish is that nothing will change.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent.

Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul.

In this, our age of infamy Man's choice is but to be A tyrant, traitor, prisoner: No other choice has he.

Habit is Heaven's own redress: it takes the place of happiness.

Unrequited love is not an affront to man but raises him.

With womankind, the less we love them, the easier they become to charm.

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

I was not born to amuse the Tsars.

Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.

Please, never despise the translator. He's the mailman of human civilization.

Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.