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And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable.
ASTROFF. Is she faithful to him? VOITSKI. Yes, unfortunately she is. ASTROFF. Why unfortunately? VOITSKI. Because such fidelity is false and unnatural, root and branch. It sounds well, but there is no logic in it. It is thought immoral for a woman to deceive an old husband whom she hates, but quite moral for her to strangle her poor youth in her breast and banish every vital desire from her heart.
Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie awake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted my time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old age now forbids.
He says that forests are the ornaments of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments.
fidelity and purity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods. Why cannot you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.
Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are such friends? I think it is because we are both lonely and unfortunate.
Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear death.
Old people want to be pitied as much as young ones, but nobody cares about them somehow.
I know now that it was not real love, but it seemed real at the time.
People like him are rare and should be loved. What if he does drink and act roughly at times? A man of genius cannot be a saint in Russia.
My misfortune is perhaps even greater than yours, but I am not plunged in despair. I endure my sorrow, and shall endure it until my life comes to a natural end. You must endure yours, too.
