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I haven't seen you for a whole week, Startsev went on, and if you only knew what suffering it is! Let us sit down. Listen to me.

They had a favourite place in the garden; a seat under an old spreading maple.

What do you want? said Ekaterina Ivanovna drily, in a matter-of-fact tone.

I have not seen you for a whole week; I have not heard you for so long. I long passionately, I thirst for your voice. Speak.

“Sit here," said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside her. "You can dance attendance on me. My husband is jealous—he is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will notice nothing."

"Ah, you spoilt chicken!" Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and he kissed her on the forehead...

The lady of the house was the first to speak

What is the 3 course? she asked in a injured voice

Esturgeon à la russe

I ordered that,Fenya, Nikolay Sergeitch hastened to observe.I wanted some fish.If you don't like it, ma chère,don't let them serve it.I just ordered it

Come, don't let us agitate ourselves, We are nervous enough as it is. Let us forget the brooch! Health is worth more than two thousand roubles!

What different people one meets in the world!From the past he preserved memories of careless,good-natured women,who loved cheerfully &were grateful to him for the happiness he gave them,however brief it might be;&of women like his wife who loved without any genuine feeling,with superfluous phrases,affectedly,hysterically,with an expression that suggested that it was not love nor passion,but something more significan

He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old,& two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year,& by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified,&, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri...

“What are you smiling at?" asked Pavel Ivanitch, pouncing on his wife. "It's only silly fools who laugh for nothing!"

His wife looked at her husband's angry face, and went off into a peal of laughter.

"What was that letter you got this morning?" she asked.

"I? . . . I didn't get one. . . ." Pavel Ivanitch was overcome with confusion. "You are inventing . . . imagination."

“It is queer . . ." he mused. "'I love you!'. . . When did she manage to fall in love? Amazing woman! To fall in love like this, apropos of nothing, without making any acquaintance and finding out what sort of man I am. . . . She must be extremely young and romantic if she is capable of falling in love after two or three looks at me. . . . But . . . who is she?”

It was stupid of me to depress her, poor girl. She is silly, that's true, uncivilised & narrow; but . . . there are two sides to the question,& audiatur et altera pars. . . . Perhaps people are perfectly right when they say that woman's shallowness rests on her very vocation. Granted that it is her vocation to love her husband, to bear children,& to mix salad, what the devil does she want with learning? No, indeed!

“I'm not joking, Lida. . . . I'm surprised and appalled at your letter. . . . You mustn't be angry, darling, but, really, I had no idea you were such a duffer at grammar. . . . And yet you belong to a cultivated, well-educated circle: you are the wife of a University man, and the daughter of a general! Tell me, did you ever go to school?"

"What next! I finished at the Von Mebke's boarding school. . . .”

I should love to marry an author. He'd always be writing poems to me.

I can write you a poem, too, if you like.

What can you write about?

Love—passion—your eyes. You'll be crazy when you read it. It would draw a tear from a stone! And if I write you a real poem, will you let me kiss your hand?

That's nothing much! You can kiss it now if you like!

“He's rising!" whispered Peplov, quivering with impatience and rubbing his hands. "Now, Kleopatra, mind; as soon as they begin talking of their feelings, take down the ikon from the wall and we'll go in and bless them. . . . We'll catch him. . . . A blessing with an ikon is sacred and binding. . . He couldn't get out of it, if he brought it into court.”

That was long ago. Now Nadenka is married; she married—whether of her own choice or not does not matter—a secretary of the Nobility Wardenship and now she has three children. That we once went tobogganning together, and that the wind brought her the words "I love you, Nadenka," is not forgotten; it is for her now the happiest, most touching, and beautiful memory in her life. . . .

Soon Nadenka grew used to that phrase as to alcohol or morphia. She could not live without it. It is true that flying down the ice-hill terrified her as before, but now the terror and danger gave a peculiar fascination to words of love—words which as before were a mystery and tantalized the soul. The same two—the wind and I were still suspected. . . .

Stop a minute, Alyosha! Stop a minute, silly, don't be cross! You are not the only one, I am in for it too! Immediately after the Mass Father Kuzma went up to the Count and asked: '& what did you think of the deacon's voice, your Excellency. He has a deep bass, hasn't he?' & the Count—do you know what he answered by way of compliment? 'Anyone can bawl,' he said. 'A man's voice is not as important as his brains.'

Let's go & have some vodka

Wait a little,maybe we shall catch something.Towards evening the fish bite better.I've been sitting here,my boy,ever since the morning!I can't tell you how fearfully boring it is.It was the devil drove me to take to this fishing!I know it’s rotten idiocy for me to sit here.I stare at the water like a fool.I ought to go to the haymaking,but here I sit catching fish...with this she-devil

Well, what now?

Nothing.

How, nothing?

Why, just nothing.

H'm. . .And which subject is the hardest?

That's according.The school-boy shrugs his shoulders

I see—er . . . What is the Latin for tree?

Arbor

Aha. . . .& so one has to know all that,sighs the blue trousers.

You have to go into it all. . . It's hard work,hard work. . .

Is your dear Mamma well?

She is all right, thank you

Ah. . .Well, run along

Yes, I am a man of weak character. . . . That is quite true. I was born so. Do you know how I came into the world? My late papa cruelly oppressed a certain little clerk—it was awful how he treated him! He poisoned his life. Well . . . and my late mama was tender-hearted. She came from the people, she was of the working class. . . . She took that little clerk to her heart from pity. . . .

It might be thought that new hopes and new desires would surge up in man when everything in nature is renewed, and young and fresh . . . but it is hard for man to renew life. . . .

Groholsky was lost in admiration. Liza was so incredibly beautiful. It is true her little kittenish face with its brown eyes, and turn up nose was fresh, and even piquant, his scanty hair was black as soot and curly, her little figure was graceful, well proportioned and mobile as the body of an electric eel, but on the whole. . .

One would have thought the imprint made on a man by his agonies would have been everlasting,never to be effaced or eradicated.& yet that imprint wears out as easily as a pair of cheap boots.There is nothing left,not a scrap.It's as though I hadn't been suffering then,but had been dancing a mazurka.Everything in the world is transitory,& that transitoriness is absurd! A wide field for humorists!Tack on a humorous end

One must be very naïve to believe in human words and logic and to ascribe any determining value to them. You can prove and disprove anything you like with words, and people will soon perfect the technique of language to such a point that they will prove with mathematical certainty that twice two is seven. I am fond of reading and listening, but as to believing, no thank you; I can't, and I don't want to...

[...] and abandoned myself to the sensation I was so fond of: that is, the sensation of fearful isolation when you feel that in the whole universe, dark and formless, you alone exist. It is a proud, demoniac sensation, only possible to Russians whose thoughts and sensations are as large, boundless, and gloomy as their plains, their forests, and their snow...

Yes, muttered the student pensively, once Philistines and Amalekites were living in this world, making wars, playing their part, and now no trace of them remains. So it will be with us. Now we are making a railway, are standing here philosophising, but two thousand years will pass—and of this embankment and of all those men, asleep after their hard work, not one grain of dust will remain. In reality, it's awful!

Why are you barking for nothing, creature? Have you had a bad dream or what? Here, doctor, let me commend to your attention, he said, turning to me, "a wonderfully nervous subject! Would you believe it, he can't endure solitude—he is always having terrible dreams and suffering from nightmares; and when you shout at him he has something like an attack of hysterics.

“You'd better read something, Sasha," I say.

She takes up a book, sits down facing me and begins moving her lips . . . . I look at her little forehead, moving lips, and sink into thought.

"She is getting on for twenty. . . ." I reflect. "If one takes a boy of the educated class and of that age and compares them, what a difference! The boy would have knowledge and convictions and some intelligence.”

“Why don't you stick little labels on the backs of your books?" she asked, taking a look at the bookcase.

"What for?"

"Oh, so that each book should have its number. And where am I to put my books? I've got books too, you know."

"What books have you got?" I asked.

Sasha raised her eyebrows, thought a moment and said:

"All sorts.”

...Fortunately for men, women in love are always blinded by their feelings and never know anything of life. Far from not assenting, they actually turn pale with holy awe, are full of reverence and hang greedily on the maniac's words...

I beg anyone who has ever been in love to remember how one usually hurries home after dropping the letter in the box,rapidly gets into bed &pulls up the quilt in the full conviction that as soon as one wakes up in the morning one will be overwhelmed with memories of the previous day &look with rapture at the window,where the daylight will be eagerly making its way through the folds of the curtain

..I have no blinds

THREE o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking in at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't sleep, I am so happy!

My whole being from head to heels is bursting with a strange, incomprehensible feeling. I can't analyse it just now—I haven't the time, I'm too lazy, and there—hang analysis!

PS: I have all the time but some works on the tram rails are done now..merry noise!

Olga,who has grown fatter & stronger in the summer,will probably come to Moscow on Sunday. I shall remain alone,& of course shall take advantage of that. As a writer it is essential for me to observe women, to study them,& so, I regret to say, I cannot be a faithful husband. As I observe women chiefly for the sake of my plays,in my opinion the Art Theatre ought to increase my wife's salary or give her a pension!