He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images without order or coherence floated before his mind--faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.
I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles," he thought, with an odd smile. "Hm … yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most… . But I am talking too much. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I've learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking … of Jack the Giant
لئن لم يكن في هذا العالم شيء أصعب من الصدق والصراحة، فلا شيء في العالم أسهل من التملق. فالصدق إذا اندس فيه عشر معشار من الكذب سرعان ما يخالطه نشاز فتقع فضيحة. أما التملق فإنه إذا كان كذبًا من أوله إلى آخره، يظل سارًا وممتعًا، فالشخص يصغي إليه شاعرًا بلذة إن لم تكن لذة سامية فهي لذة على كل حال. ومهما يكن التملق مفضوحا فإن نصف المديح على الأقل ينطلي على الممدوح. يصدق هذا على جميع طبقات الناس في المجتمع. ان في وسعك أن تغوي بالمديح أطهر فتاة فمابالك بغيرها
إنه واحد من تلك الفئة الكبيرة من اﻷغبياء والفاشلين الذين لا يفوتهم أبداً أن يتعلقوا على الفور باﻷفكار التي يعرفون أنها رائجة رواج الموضة، والذين يفسدون ويشوهون كل ما يستعملونه ولو كان تعلقهم به صادقاً مخلصاً. - هل لاحظت يا روديون رومانوفتش أنه عندنا في روسيا، ما أن يلتق شخصان ذكيان -مثلنا نحن أنا وأنت- حتى نرى هذين الشخصين عاجزين طوال نصف ساعة عن العثور على كلمة واحدة يقولها أحدهما للآخر؟
There’s no one here who is worthy of such words!’ Aglaya burst out. ‘None of them, none of them here are worthy of your little finger, nor your heart! You are more honourable than them all, nobler than them all, better than them all, kinder than them all, cleverer than them all! There are people here who are unworthy to bend down and pick up the handkerchief you’ve dropped… Why do you humiliate yourself and make yourself lower than them all? Why have you twisted everything in yourself, why is there no pride in you?
We've already had Malthus, the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge—like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself.
One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astrachan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it—the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Switzerland or North Italy—was by no means adapted to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.