"These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs."
"There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality."
"In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!"(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)"
"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."
"Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning."
"Even in Siberia there is happiness."