People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.

He assumed that there must be a connection between all that had happened yesterday and all that surrounded him now. At last, in his misery, he began to long for something - goodness knows what - to happen to put an end to it - even some calamity - he did not care.

Now I'm living out my life in a corner, trying to console myself with the stupid, useless excuse that an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything, that only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself.

Then I would make each minute into a whole lifetime, I would lose nothing, would account for each minute, waste nothing in vain!

Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don't work too much, either.

It is impossible, for example, while preserving reason, to want senselessness.

The most refined shedders of blood have been almost always the most highly civilized gentlemen.