The Man From St. Petersburg

by Ken Follett

You can knock me down, he thought, but you can’t knock me out; if you knew I was back here again, you’d tremble in your patent-leather shoes.

“The morality of Tolstoy. Doing good may not make you happy, but doing wrong will certainly make you unhappy.”

Still she wanted to find out things for herself, so that she could be sure of the truth.

Now she thought: If we educate ourselves we won’t be ignorant; if we think for ourselves we won’t be stupid; and if we struggle together we won’t be weak.

She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly, So much his life seemed hanging on her mind, And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly ’Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.

One of the few indulgent decisions Lydia had made was to allow Charlotte her hideaway, and to forbid Marya to “discover” it; for Lydia herself hid away sometimes, in the flower room, and she knew how important it was to have a place of your own.