Great Throughts Treasury

"They don't listen to me, they don't hear me, they don't see me."

"They would imprint upon each other's lips such a long and languishing kiss, that a little straw cigar might have been smoked during the time it lasted."

"They're thinking of turning the peasant into an educated man. Why, first of all they should make him a good and prosperous farmer and then he'll learn all that is necessary for him to know."

"This was not the old Chichikov. This was some wreckage of the old Chichikov. The inner state of his soul might be compared to a demolished building, which has been demolished so that from it a new one could be built; but the new one has not been started yet, because the infinitive plan has not yet come from the architect and the workers are left in perplexity."

"There exists a kind of laughter which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker."

"To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka?a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman?a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual who was seated in it. Look at that carriage, one of them said to the other. Think you it will be going as far as Moscow? I think it will, replied his companion. But not as far as Kazan, eh? No, not as far as Kazan. With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door, its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi, or waiter, of the establishment?an individual of such nimble and brisk movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the gentleman's reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all provincial towns?the species wherein, for two roubles a day, travelers may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles, and communicating by a doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the doorway may be blocked up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all probability, there will be standing a silent, motionless neighbor whose ears are burning to learn every possible detail concerning the latest arrival. The inn's exterior corresponded with its interior. Long, and consisting only of two storeys, the building had its lower half destitute of stucco; with the result that the dark-red bricks, originally more or less dingy, had grown yet dingier under the influence of atmospheric changes."

"To tell the truth, that at first it was somewhat difficult to get used to such restrictions, but then somehow got used and went smoothly; He even got used to being hungry in the evening; but he was fed spiritually, bearing in mind its eternal idea of his future cloak."

"To think of such an affair happening in this our vast empire's northern capital! Yet general opinion decided that the affair had about it much of the improbable. Leaving out of the question the nose's strange, unnatural removal, and its subsequent appearance as a State Councilor, how came Kovalev not to know that one ought not to advertise for a nose through a newspaper? [?] such a proceeding would have been gauche, derogatory, not the thing. And how came the nose into the baked roll? And what of Ivan Yakovlevitch? Oh, I cannot understand these points?absolutely I cannot. And the strangest, most unintelligible fact of all is that authors actually can select such occurrences for their subject! (3.23-24)"

"To walk without a nose, you accept that to me is not proper (...) But you are - my own nose! Nose looked at the Major and his brow darkened a bit. - You're wrong, kind sir: I am alone by myself. Besides, any closer to friendly terms between us is impossible. Judging by the buttons of your uniform, you're a clerk of the Senate or the Ministry of Justice, while I take a stand in public"

"Turn round, my boy! How ridiculous you look! What sort of a priest's cassock have you got on? Does everybody at the academy dress like that?"

"Turn around, son! What a funny figure you are! Are those priests' cassocks you are wearing? And do they all go about like that at the academy?" With these words old Bulba greeted his two sons who had been studying at the Kiev college and had come home to their father."

"Today is the day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me. I only discovered this today. Frankly, it all came to me in a flash."

"Two turtle doves will show thee where my cold ashes lie and sadly murmuring tell thee how in tears I did die."

"Well, so that's the prosecutor! He lived and lived, and then died! And they will say in the papers that he died to the regret of his staff and all mankind, a respected citizen, a rare father, a model husband, and they will write a lot more stuff and nonsense about him; they will add, maybe, that he was mourned by widows and orphans; but if one were to investigate the matter thoroughly, it will emerge that he had nothing to him except his bushy eyebrows."

"We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any."

"What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen."

"What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves!"

"When the priest went in, he stopped short at the sight of this defamation of God's holy place, and dared not serve the requiem on such a spot. And so the church was left forever, with monsters stuck in the doors and windows, was overgrown with forest trees, roots, rough grass and wild thorns, and no one can now find the way to it."

"What is utterly absurd happens in the world"

"Wherever in life it may be, whether amongst its tough, coarsely poor, and untidily moldering mean ranks, or its monotonously cold and boringly tidy upper classes, a man will at least once meet with a phenomenon which is unlike anything he has happened to see before, which for once at least awakens in him a feeling unlike those he is fated to feel all his life. Wherever, across whatever sorrow sour life is woven of, a resplendent joy will gaily race by, just as a splendid carriage with golden harness, picture-book horses, and a shining brilliance of glass sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly goes speeding by some poor, forsaken hamlet that has never seen anything but a country cart, and for a long time the muzhiks stand gaping open-mouthed, not putting their hats back on, though the wondrous carriage has long since sped away and vanished from sight."

"Where to get another forty rubles? Akaky thought and thought and decided that I needed to reduce the ordinary expenses, although at least one year, to dispense with tea in the evening, not to light candles in the evenings, and if it will need to do to go into the room and the hostess work by her light; walking the streets, stepping as light as possible and be careful, upon the stones, almost on tiptoe, so as to not scuff the soles skorovremenno; as little as possible to give a laundress to wash the clothes and order not to wear it every time you come home, it Skidan and remain alone cotton dressing, very distant and sparing even time itself."

"Why, then, make a show of the poverty of our life and our sad imperfection, unearthing people from the backwoods, from remote corners of the state? But what if this is in the writer's nature, and his own imperfection grieves him so, and the makeup of his talent is such, that he can only portray the poverty of our life, unearthing people from the backwoods, from the remote corners of the state! So here we are again in the backwoods, again we have come out in some corner!"

"Why do I constantly hear the echo of your mournful song as it is carried from the sea through your entire expanse?... And since you are without end yourself, is it not within you that a boundless thought will be born?"

"Women really love flowers, yes, it's a very pleasant occupation"

"You can do anything and smash anything in the world with a kopeck."

"Youth is happy because it has a future."

"You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write!"

"You should know that one important person recently made ??a significant person, and until that time he was a little person. However, his place and now was not considered significant in comparison with other, more significant. But there is always a group of people for whom a minor in the eyes of others, is already significant"