“Kosykh: What the hell... is there really no one even to talk to? We might as well be living in Australia: no common interests, no solidarity... Everyone lives separate lives...But I must go... it's time. [Takes his cap.] Time is precious. [Gives Lebedev his hand.] I pass!”

“There will come a time when everybody will know why, for what purpose, there is all this suffering, and there will be no more mysteries. But now we must live ... we must work, just work!”

“To live simply to die is by no means amusing, but to live with the knowledge that you will die before your time, that's really is idiotic”

“He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.”

“Levedev: It's no great thing to drink - a horse too can drink... No, one must drink intelligently... in our time we used to struggle with lectures all day, but as soon as evening came we went straight off somewhere where the lights were shining and spun like tops til dawn... ... We would talk nonsense and philosophy till our tongues went numb... But today's lot... I don't understand... They wouldn't make God a candle or the Devil a poker.”

“Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!”

“Lebedev: ...There'll be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but it's better to go through a scandal, isn't it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.”