Part 24 (1/2)

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 usual: ”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 fiancee is very pretty.” ”To me all women are alike.”