MihaElla ’s Reviews > The Lady with the Dog: And Other Stories > Status Update

Life is only given us once,& one wants to live it boldly,with full consciousness & beauty.One wants to play a striking,independent,noble part;one wants to make history so that next generations may not have the right to say of each of us that we were nonentities or worse.I believe what is going on about us is inevitable & not without a purpose,but what have I to do with that inevitability?Why should my ego be lost?

“...What was that love? It's positively absurd now," she said, going to the window and looking down at the canal.
"All this love only clouds the conscience and confuses the mind. The meaning of life is to be found only in one thing—fighting. To get one's heel on the vile head of the serpent and to crush it! That's the meaning of life. In that alone or in nothing.”

It is fine to be an artist, a poet, a dramatist," I thought, "but since that is not vouchsafed to me, if only I could go in for mysticism! If only I had a grain of some faith to add to the unruffled peace and serenity that fills the soul!

I have made up my mind to go abroad with you tomorrow.Accept me as a recruit. Have you read Balzac? Have you? At the end of his novel 'Père Goriot' the hero looks down upon Paris from the top of a hill and threatens the town: 'Now we shall settle our account,' and after this he begins a new life. So when I look out of the train window at Petersburg for the last time, I shall say, 'Now we shall settle our account!

You are afraid of life—as afraid of it as an Oriental who sits all day on a cushion smoking his hookah. Yes, you read a great deal, and a European coat fits you well, but yet with what tender, purely Oriental, pasha-like care you protect yourself from hunger, cold, physical effort, from pain and uneasiness! How early your soul has taken to its dressing-gown!...

Tell me honestly, as a friend, what do you think about me?

What am I to say? he said, raising his eyebrows. I love you and think nothing but good of you. But if you wish that I should speak generally about the question that interests you,he went on,rubbing his sleeve near the elbow & frowning, "then, my dear,you know..To follow freely the promptings of the heart does not always give good people happiness...

Like Orlov, she wanted to be unhappy out of obstinacy. To spite herself & everything in the world, she lay for days together on the sofa,desiring & expecting nothing but evil for herself. Probably she was picturing to herself Orlov's return & the inevitable quarrels with him; then his growing indifference to her, his infidelities;then how they would separate;& perhaps these agonising thoughts gave her satisfaction

Well,now for the evils of marriage.It's high time for you to understand that there are no evils in the system itself;what is the matter is that you don't know yourselves what you want from marriage.What is it you want?In legal and illegal cohabitation, in every sort of union and cohabitation,good or bad, the underlying reality is the same.You ladies live for that underlying reality alone: for you it's everything...

“I don't understand you, all the same. You are not a student and she is not a dressmaker. You are both of you people with means. I should have thought you might have arranged a separate flat for her."

"No, I couldn't. Read Turgenev."

"Why should I read him? I have read him already."

You will excuse me, reading at breakfast is a habit I can't get over. But I can do two things at once—read and listen

Read away. . .You shall keep your habits and your freedom. But why do you look so solemn? Are you always like that in the morning, or is it only to-day? Aren't you glad?

Yes, I am. But I must own I am a little overwhelmed.

Why? You had plenty of time to prepare yourself for my descent upon you..