It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.

Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal- at cards.

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

However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.

Steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?

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.