“the superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation...is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation.”

“We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom”

“No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be able to leave it.”

“But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.”

“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”

I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.”

“There was no solution but that usual solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer one must live in the needs of one that - that is, forget oneself.”

“Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?”

“I turned my attention to every­ thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I was horrified.”

“Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.”

“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”

“I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.”

“Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad HER having been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already... it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?”

“I must ask what it is you want of me?" "What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.”

“So you make a sacrifice!' he threw special emphasis on the last word. 'Well, so do I. What could be better? We complete in generosity--what an example of family happiness!”