Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer and socialist political thinker and proponent. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he traveled widely across the Russian Empire, changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.

Maxim Gorky Quotes

1. “When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.”
— Maxim Gorky

2. “Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.”
— Maxim Gorky

3. “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.”
— Maxim Gorky

4. “Everything which is good in me should be credited to books.”
— Maxim Gorky

5. “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.”
— Maxim Gorky

6. “Truth doesn’t always heal a wounded soul.”
— Maxim Gorky

7. “When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid.”
— Maxim Gorky

8. “We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it.”
— Maxim Gorky

9. “When the life is monotonous, even grief is a welcome event…”
— Maxim Gorky

10. “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.”
— Maxim Gorky

11. “Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say – to them silence is simple and easy.”
— Maxim Gorky

12. “Our most merciless enemy is our past.”
— Maxim Gorky

13. “Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That’s why we want to be considerate of every man – Who knows what’s in him, why he was born and what he can do?”
— Maxim Gorky

14. “Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.”
— Maxim Gorky

15. “You can’t do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.”
— Maxim Gorky