"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."
"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."
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
"Even in Siberia there is happiness."
"Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions."(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)"
"Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning."