To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what’s is so painful you can’t sense your powers leaving you. It’s hard for an old man to ensure such blows!
His little eyes, which looked as if they’d literally been hammered into place, gazed out fixedly and uncomfortably, and he also had a way of laughing uncomfortably with an abrupt, wooden laugh.
Death is something ancient, but it comes fresh to each of us.
I had no first love,′ he said at last; ‘I began with the second.
He who hasn’t seen such tears in the eyes of a beloved hasn’t yet experienced the full degree of happiness a man can have on this Earth, overcome by gratitude and shame.
Every single man hangs by a thread, a bottomless pit can open beneath him any minute, and yet he still goes on thinking up unpleasantnesses for himself and making a mess of his life.
The appearance of mediocrity is often useful in life because it weakens tautly strung strings and sobers up people’s self-confident or self-forgetful feelings, reminding them how close they are to mediocrity as well.
While a man is living he is not conscious of his own life; it becomes audible to him, like a sound, after the lapse of time.
Death doesn’t come running, but you can’t run away from it, neither; nor must you be helping it along.
My dear Natalya Petrovna, there’s funny and funny.
There are none so easily carried away as those who are without passion.
The misfortune of solitary and timid people – who are timid from self-consciousness – is just that, though they have eyes and indeed open them wide, they see nothing, or see everything in a false light, as though through coloured spectacles.
We act by virtue of what we recognize as beneficial. At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all – and we deny.
Traces of human life vanish very quickly: Glafira Petrovna’s estate had not yet gone wild, but it seemed already to have sunk into that quiet repose which possesses everything on earth wherever there is no restless human infection to affect it.
I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved;.
And now, when the shades of evening begin to steal over my life, what have I left fresher, more precious, than the memories of the storm – so soon over – of early morning, of spring?
Her whole life had been passed in the bitter struggle with daily want; she had known no joy, had not tasted the honey of happiness.
The “why not” of youth, the secret desire to know his luck, to try his strength all on his own without the support of another, eventually won through.
It’s no good writing if God hasn’t given you talent. People will just laugh.
I assure you, Alexandra Pavlovna,′ said Pigasov slowly, ’nothing can be worse and more injurious than good-fortune that comes too late. It cannot give you pleasure in any way, and it deprives you of the right – the precious right – of complaining and cursing Providence. Yes, madam, it’s a cruel and insulting trick – belated fortune.