Whilst stay-at-home persons are searching for truth, the apple will stay on the tree.

If you turn to the right, you will marry, if to the left, you will be killed." A true philosopher never chooses the middle course; he needs no riches, he does not know what to do with money. But whether he turns to the right or to the left, nothing pleasant awaits him.

Herein lies the supreme wisdom, human and divine; and the task of philosophy consists in teaching men to submit joyously to Necessity which hears nothing and is indifferent to all.

The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty... not to reassure him, but to upset him.

After a tragedy, a farce. Philosophy enters into her power, and the earth returns under one's feet.

Although we had had no precise exponents of realism, yet after Pushkin it was impossible for a Russian writer to depart too far from actuality. Even those who did not know what to do with "real life" had to cope with it as best they could. Hence, in order that the picture of life should not prove too depressing, the writer must provide himself in due season with a philosophy.