Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life.

Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.

I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.

Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.