Another piece of advice: when you proofread cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. You have so many modifiers that the reader has trouble understanding and gets worn out. It is comprehensible when I write: The man sat on the grass, because it is clear and does not detain one's attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully. The brain can't grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously. And then one other thing; you are lyrical by nature. The timber of your soul is soft. If you were a composer you would avoid writing marches. It is unnatural for your talent to curse, shout, taunt, denounce with rage. Therefore, you'll understand if I advise you, in proofreading, to eliminate the sons of bitches, curs, and flea-bitten mutts that appear here and there on the pages of Life.
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Man is what he believes.
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I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.
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Happiness does not await us all. One needn't be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why w...
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He is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a ruff or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thr...
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A fiancé is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.
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An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.
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When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible bo...
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All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart st...
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If you cry 'Forward' you must without fail make plain in what direction to go. Don't you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in directions precisely opposite
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Death can only be profitable: there's no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thou...
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He who constantly swims in the ocean loves dry land.
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My worst enemies are those who presume me to be harmless. They cannot imagine how much I resent and disdain them, or just how great a threat they would face if I could get at them. Everything in their behavior speaks of insult and presumptuousness, and for now it is all I can do to make constructive use of my anger toward them. At this time, I just make a list of them and keep a watch on. Some day, with the help of time, space, and circumstance, I will be able to humiliate them properly - not in a manner they would enjoy, but in a style calculated to make them wish that they had never been born.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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If only one tooth aches, rejoice that not all of them ache.... If your wife betrays you, be glad that she betrayed only you and not the nation...
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Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, and the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
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For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or some...
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When in a serious mood, it seems to me that those people are illogical who feel an aversion toward death. As far as I can see, life consists e...
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'Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.'
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Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune follows hap...
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We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
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Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.
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The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.
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Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external s...
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When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.
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Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
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When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you'll eat ...
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It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why...
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Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.
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After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will rema...
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