it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life.

What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.

The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.

I am who I am and that's who I am

Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die

Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.

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.