Maxim Gorky

"Only mothers can think of the future - because they give birth to it in their children."

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is."

"When one loves somebody everything is clear - where to go what to do - it all takes care of itself and one doesn't have to ask anybody about anything."

"Every new time will give its law."

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands but let it go and you learn at once how big and precious it is."

"To an old man any place that's warm is homeland."

"We must endure, Alyosha." That was the only thing she could say in response to my accounts of the ugliness and dreariness of life, of the suffering of the people — of everything against which I protested so vehemently. I was not made for endurance, and if occasionally I exhibited this virtue of cattle, wood, and stone, I did so only to test myself, to try my strength and my stability. Sometimes young people, in the foolishness of immaturity, or in envy of the strength of their elders, strive, even successfully, to lift weights that overtax their bones and muscles; in their vanity they attempt to cross themselves with two-pood weights, like mature athletes. I too did this, in the literal and figurative sense, physically and spiritually, and only good fortune kept me from injuring myself fatally or crippling myself for life. For nothing cripples a person so dreadfully as endurance, as a humble submission to the forces of circumstance."

"All of us are pilgrims on this earth. I have even heard it said that the earth itself is a pilgrim in the heavens."

"Like some wondrous birds out of fairy tales, books sang their songs to me and spoke to me as though communing with one languishing in prison; they sang of the variety and richness of life, of man’s audacity in his strivings towards goodness and beauty."

"Our existence has always and everywhere been tragic, but man has converted these numberless tragedies into works of art. I know of nothing more astonishing or more wonderful than this transformation."

"An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form."