Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligence--and with all that, a generous mixture of self-love, ambition, vanity, petty personal ticklishness, and a good many of those things which a man simply cannot do without.

There exists a kind of laughter which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker.

I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.

We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any.

Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?

You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.