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Baldassarre was still sitting on the straw when the shadow of Tito passed by.Before him lay the fragments of the broken dagger;beside him lay the open book, over which he had pored in vain.They looked like mocking symbols of his utter helplessness;& his body was still too trembling for him to rise & walk away.But the next morning, very early, the door of the hovel was open,& the strange old man was gone.

“Haven’t you been scolding your husband for keeping away from home so much lately? I see him everywhere but here,” said Bernardo, willing to change the subject.

She felt the flush spread over her neck and face as she said, “He has been very much wanted; you know he speaks so well. I am glad to know that his value is understood.”

He was leaning over his desk,writing,& she had laid her hand on his head, meaning to give a parting caress. The attitude had been a frequent one, and Tito was accustomed, when he felt her hand there, to raise his head, throw himself a little backward, and look up at her. But he felt now as unable to raise his head as if her hand had been a leaden cowl. He spoke instead, in a light tone, as his pen still ran along...

Could he prove anything? Could he even begin to allege anything, with the confidence that the links of thought would not break away? Would any believe that he had ever had a mind filled with rare knowledge, busy with close thoughts, ready with various speech? It had all slipped away from him—that laboriously-gathered store.

“Now that’s what I can’t bear in you women,” said Piero, turning impatiently, and kicking aside the objects that littered the floor—“you are always pouring out feelings where there’s no call for them. Why should you be grateful to me for a picture you pay me for, especially when I make you wait for it? And if I paint a picture, I suppose it’s for my own pleasure and credit to paint it well, eh?

“Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness.”

The eighteen months had produced a more definable change in Romola’s face than in Tito’s; the expression was more subdued, less cold, and more beseeching, and, as the pink flush overspread her face now, in her joy that the long waiting was at an end, she was much lovelier than on the day when Tito had first seen her.

It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon. And Romola was urged to doubt herself the more by the necessity of interpreting her disappointment in her life with Tito so as to satisfy at once her love and her pride. Disappointment?

It was clear that their natures differed widely;but perhaps it was no more than the inherent difference between man & woman,that made her affections more absorbing.If there were any other difference she tried to persuade herself that the inferiority was on her side.Tito was really kinder than she was,better tempered,less proud & resentful;he had no angry retorts,he met all complaints with perfect sweetness;

The mysteries of human character have seldom been presented in a way more fitted to check the judgments of facile knowingness than in Girolamo Savonarola; but we can give him a reverence that needs no shutting of the eyes to fact, if we regard his life as a drama in which there were great inward modifications accompanying the outward changes...

“A mysterious old tiger!” thought the artist, “well worth painting. Ugly—with deep lines—looking as if the plough and the harrow had gone over his heart. A fine contrast to my bland and smiling Messer Greco—my Bacco trionfante, who has married the fair Antigone in contradiction to all history and fitness. Aha! his scholar’s blood curdled uncomfortably at the old fellow’s clutch!”

She had looked long and attentively at Baldassarre, for grey hairs made a peculiar appeal to her, and the stamp of some unwonted suffering in the face, confirmed by the cord round his neck, stirred in her those sensibilities towards the sorrows of age, which her whole life had tended to develop. She fancied that his eyes had met hers in their first wandering gaze; but Baldassarre had not, in reality, noted her;

“It was the 17th of November 1494: more than eighteen months since Tito and Romola had been finally united in the joyous Easter time, and had had a rainbow-tinted shower of comfits thrown over them, after the ancient Greek fashion, in token that the heavens would shower sweets on them through all their double life.

at last he decided that his life had not just turned out to be so simple and uncomplicated, but had been created and meant to be so in order to show that the ideally reposeful aspect of human existence was possible. It fell to the lot of other people, he reflected, to express its troubled aspects and set in motion the creative and destructive forces: everyone has his own fixed purpose in life!

My happiness is brimming over, I so want to live and-suddenly all is gall and wormwood...
Ah, that’s what one has to pay for the Promethean fire! It isn’t enough to suffer, you have to love this melancholy and respect your doubts and questionings: they represent the surfeit, the luxury of life, and mostly appear on the summits of happiness, when there are no coarse desires;

‘Forward, forward!’ Olga had said. ‘Higher, higher, to that boundary where the power of grace and tenderness loses its rights and where man’s kingdom begins!’
How clearly she saw life! How easily she had found her way in that intricate book and had guessed instinctively his way in it too! Their two lives, like two rivers, must merge: he was to be her guide, her leader!

You are young and you don’t know all the dangers, Olga. Sometimes a man loses his mastery over himself. He is possessed by some evil power, his heart is plunged into darkness, his eyes flash lightnings. He is no longer capable of thinking clearly: respect for purity and innocence is carried away by a whirlwind; he does not know what he is doing; ...

Oblomov could not understand where she got her strength from nor how she could possibly know what to do and how to do it whatever circumstance might arise. ‘It’s because one of her eyebrows is never straight, but is raised a little, and there is a very thin and hardly perceptible line over it’, he thought. ‘It’s there-in that crease- that her stubbornness lies concealed’.

What am I to live for? he said, walking after her. Who for? What am I to seek? What am I to turn to? What am I to strive for? The flowers of life have fallen and only the thorns remain.
They walked along slowly; she listened absent-mindedly &, in passing, tore off a sprig of lilac & gave it to him without looking.
What’s this? he asked, taken aback.
You see, it’s a twig.
What kind of a twig?
Lilac.

No, he cried aloud, getting up from the sofa and pacing the room. This cannot be! To love a ridiculous fellow like me, with sleepy eyes and flabby cheeks…She is just laughing at me…
He stopped before the looking-glass and examined himself for a long time, first disapprovingly, then his eyes suddenly cleared; he even smiled.

Heavens,how pretty she is!he thought,looking at her almost with terrified eyes.& to think that such wonderful girls actually exist!This white skin,these eyes which are as dark as deep pools & yet there is something gleaming in them- her soul,no doubt!Her smile can be read like a book,disclosing her beautiful teeth &-& her whole head-how tenderly it rests on her shoulders,swaying,like a flower,breathing with fragrance

Oblomov laid down on his side & spent an hour thinking of-Olga.At first he tried hard to recall what she looked like, drawing her portrait from memory. Strictly speaking,Olga was no beauty-that is, her cheeks were not of a vivid color,& her eyes did not burn with an inward fire;her lips were not corals nor her teeth pearls, nor were her hands as tiny as those of a child of five nor her fingernails shaped like grapes.

What is this ideal, this norm of life?
Oblomov made no answer.
Now, tell me, Stolz went on, what sort of life would you have planned for yourself?
I have already planned it.
Oh? Tell me, what is it?
What is it? said Oblomov, turning over on his back and staring at the ceiling. Well, I’d go to the country.
Why don’t you?
My plan isn’t ready. Besides, I wouldn’t have gone by myself, but with my wife.

To pay 200, 300, or 500 roubles all at once for something,however necessary it might be,seemed almost suicidal to them. Hearing that a young local landowner had been to Moscow and bought a dozen shirts for 300 roubles,a pair of boots for 25 roubles,& a waistcoat for his wedding for 40 roubles, Oblomov’s father crossed himself and said, with a look of horror on his face, that ‘such a scamp must be locked up’.

I’m quite different, am I? Wait, think carefully what you’re saying. Just consider how the “others” live. The “others” work hard, they rush about, they’re always busy, Oblomov went on. If they don’t work, they don’t eat. The “others” bow and scrape, beg, grovel. And I? Well,tell me,what do you think: am I like “other people”?
Please,sir,don’t go on torturing me with pathetic words, Zakhar implored. Oh dear, oh dear!

Well, do as you like. It’s my duty to warn you. That’s all. You must also avoid passionate entanglements; they interfere with the cure. You must try and divert yourself by riding, dancing, moderate exercise in the fresh air, pleasant conversation, especially with ladies, so that your heart should be stirred lightly and only by pleasant sensations.
Oblomov listened to him dejectedly.
And then? he asked.
And then...

Outwardly, however, Oblomov’s relations with Zakhar were always rather hostile. Living together, they got on each other’s nerves. A close, daily intimacy between two people has to be paid for: it requires a great deal of experience of life, logic, and warmth of heart on both sides to enjoy each other’s good qualities without being irritated by each other’s shortcomings and blaming each other for them.

In those blissful days Oblomov too, had his share of not a few tender, soft, and even passionate glances from the crowd of beauties, a lot of promising smiles, two or three stolen kisses, and many more friendly handshakes, that made him suffer and brought tears to his eyes. Still, he never surrendered entirely to a pretty woman and never became her slave, or even a faithful admirer, if only because intimacy with a...

Isn’t my fault, sir, if there are bugs in the world, Zakhar said with naive surprise. I didn’t invent them, did I?
It’s because of the dirt, Oblomov interrupted him. What nonsense you do talk!
I didn’t invent dirt, either.
You’ve got mice running about in your room at night- I can hear them.
I didn’t invent the mice, either. There are lots of these creatures everywhere, sir: mice and moths and bugs.

And what about the dust on the walls-the cobwebs? Oblomov said, pointing to the walls.
I usually sweep the walls before Easter, sir. I clean the icons then,too, and take off the cobwebs.
And the books and pictures-when do you dust them?
The books and pictures,sir, I do before Christmas: Anisya and I turn out all the book-cases then. How do you expect me to clean the place now? You’re at home all day, aren’t you?