There is nothing more vapid than a philistine petty bourgeois existence with its farthings, victuals, vacuous conversations, and useless conventional… - Anton Chekhov

Between "there is a God" and "there is no God" lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little. (Diary, 1897)

Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up — -no more flower.