* * * * *
N. and Z. are school friends, each seventeen or eighteen years old; and suddenly N. learns that Z. is with child by N.’s father.
* * * * *
The priezt came … zaint … praize to thee, O Lord.
* * * * *
What empty words these discussions about the rights of women! If a dog writes a work of talent, they will even accept the dog.
* * * * *
Hæmorrhage: “It’s an abscess that’s just burst inside you … it’s all right, have some more vodka.”
* * * * *
The intelligentsia are good for nothing, because they drink a lot of tea, talk a lot in stuffy rooms, with empty bottles.
* * * * *
When she was young, she ran away with a doctor, a Jew, and had a daughter by him; now she hates her past, hates the red-haired daughter, and the father still loves her as well as the daughter, and walks under her window, chubby and handsome.
* * * * *
He picked his teeth and put the toothpick back into the glass.
* * * * *
The husband and wife could not sleep; they began to discuss how bad literature had become and how nice it would be to publish a magazine: the idea carried them away; they lay awake silent for awhile. “Shall we ask Boborykin to write?” he asked. “Certainly, do ask him.” At five in the morning he starts for his work at the depot; she sees him off walking in the snow to the gate, shuts the gate after him…. “And shall we ask Potapenko?” he asks, already outside the gate.
* * * * *
When he learnt that his father had been raised to the nobility he began to sign himself Alexis.
* * * * *
Teacher: “‘The collision of a train with human victims’ … that is wrong … it ought to be ‘the collision of a train that resulted in human victims’ … for the cause of the people on the line.”
* * * * *
Title of play: Golden Rain.
* * * * *
There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human.
* * * * *
A patriot: “And do you know that our Russian macaroni is better than the Italian? I’ll prove it to you. Once at Nice they brought me sturgeon — do you know, I nearly cried.” And the patriot did not see that he was only gastronomically patriotic.
* * * * *
A grumbler: “But is turkey food? Is caviare food?”
* * * * *
A very sensible, clever young woman; when she was bathing, he noticed that she had a narrow pelvis and pitifully thin hips — and he got to hate her.
* * * * *
A clock. Yegor the locksmith’s clock at one time loses and at another gains exactly as if to spite him; deliberately it is now at twelve and then quite suddenly at eight. It does it out of animosity as though the devil were in it. The locksmith tries to find out the cause, and once he plunges it in holy water.
* * * * *
Formerly the heroes in novels and stories (e.g. Petchorin, Onyeguin) were twenty years old, but now one cannot have a hero under thirty to thirty-five years. The same will soon happen with heroines.
* * * * *
N. is the son of a famous father; he is very nice, but, whatever he does, every one says: “That is very well, but it is nothing to the father.” Once he gave a recitation at an evening party; all the performers had a success, but of him they said: “That is very well, but still it is nothing to the father.” He went home and got into bed and, looking at his father’s portrait, shook his fist at him.
* * * * *
We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usuaclass="underline" “In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past.”
* * * * *
My motto: I don’t want anything.
* * * * *
When a decent working-man takes himself and his work critically, people call him grumbler, idler, bore; but when an idle scoundrel shouts that it is necessary to work, he is applauded.
* * * * *
When a woman destroys things like a man, people think it natural and everybody understands it; but when like a man, she wishes or tries to create, people think it unnatural and cannot reconcile themselves to it.
* * * * *
When I married, I became an old woman.
* * * * *
He looked down on the world from the height of his baseness.
* * * * *
“Your fiancée is very pretty.” “To me all women are alike.”
* * * * *
He dreamt of winning three hundred thousand in lottery, twice in succession, because three hundred thousand would not be enough for him.
* * * * *
N., a retired Councillor of State, lives in the country; he is sixty-six. He is educated, liberal-minded, reads, likes an argument. He learns from his guests that the new coroner Z. walks about with a slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, and lives with another man’s wife. N. thinks all the time of Z.; he does nothing but talk about him, how he walks about in one slipper and lives with another man’s wife; he talks of nothing else; at last he goes to sleep with his own wife (he has not slept with her for the last eight years), he is agitated and the whole time talks about Z. Finally he has a stroke, his arm and leg are paralyzed — and all this from agitation about Z. The doctor comes. With him too N. talks about Z. The doctor says that he knows Z., that Z. now wears two boots, his leg being well, and that he has married the lady.
* * * * *
I hope that in the next world I shall be able to look back at this life and say: “Those were beautiful dreams….”
* * * * *
The squire N., looking at the undergraduate and the young girl, the children of his steward Z.: “I am sure Z. steals from me, lives grandly on stolen money, the undergraduate and the girl know it or ought to know it; why then do they look so decent?”
* * * * *
She is fond of the word “compromise,” and often uses it; “I am incapable of compromise….” “A board which has the shape of a parallelepiped.”
* * * * *
The hereditary honorable citizen Oziaboushkin always tries to make out that his ancestors had the right to the title of Count.
* * * * *
“He is a perfect dab at it.” “O, O, don’t use that expression; my mother is very particular.”
* * * * *
I have just married my third husband … the name of the first was Ivan Makarivitch … of the second Peter … Peter … I have forgotten.
* * * * *
The writer Gvozdikov thinks that he is very famous, that every one knows him. He arrives at S., meets an officer who shakes his hand for a long time, looking with rapture into his face. G. is glad, he too shakes hands warmly…. At last the officer: “And how is your orchestra? Aren’t you the conductor?”
* * * * *
Morning; M.’s mustaches are in curl papers.
* * * * *
And it seemed to him that he was highly respected and valued everywhere, anywhere, even in railway buffets, and so he always ate with a smile on his face.
* * * * *
The birds sing, and already it begins to seem to him that they do not sing, but whine.
* * * * *
N., father of a family, listens to his son reading aloud J.J. Rousseau to the family, and thinks: “Well, at any rate, J.J. Rousseau had no gold medal on his breast, but I have one.”
* * * * *
N. has a spree with his step-son, an undergraduate, and they go to a brothel. In the morning the undergraduate is going away, his leave is up; N. sees him off. The undergraduate reads him a sermon on their bad behavior; they quarrel. N: “As your father, I curse you.” — “And I curse you.”
* * * * *
A doctor is called in, but a nurse sent for.
* * * * *
N.N.V. never agrees with anyone: “Yes, the ceiling is white, that can be admitted; but white, as far as is known, consists of the seven colors of the spectrum, and it is quite possible that in this case one of the colors is darker or brighter than is necessary for the production of pure white; I had rather think a bit before saying that the ceiling is white.”