Maxim Gorky

Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future

In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday, and a fire is an entertainment. A scratch embellishes an empty face.

the mother again remarked the simplicity and calmness of their relation to each other. it was hard for her to get used to it. no kissing, no affictionate words passed between them but they behaved so sincerely, so amicably and so solicitously toward each other. in the life she had been accustomed to, people kissed a great deal and uttered many sentimental words, but always bit at one another like hungry dogs.

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.

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__ audacity in his strivings towards goodness and beauty.

The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.

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.

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.

The illness of a doctor is always worse than the illnesses of his patients.The patients only feel, but the doctor, as well as feeling, has a pretty good idea of the destructive effect of the disease on his constitution.This is a case in which knowledge brings death nearer.

Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.

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.