“Великодушното сърце може да заобича от състрадание”

“She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. [...] This naive combination in her of the child and the thinking woman, this childlike and absolutely genuine thirst for truth and justice, and absolute faith in her impulses--all this lighted up her face with a fine glow of sincerity, giving it a lofty, spiritual beauty, and one began to understand that it was not so easy to gauge the full significance of that beauty which was not all at once apparent to every ordinary unsympathetic eye.”

“Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

“And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes--you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love...”

“‎Kalganov ran back into the front hall, sat down in a corner, bent his head, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry. He sat like that and cried for a long time--cried as though he were still a little boy and not a man of twenty... 'What are these people, what sort of people can there be after this!' he kept exclaiming incoherently, in bitter dejection, almost in despair. At that moment he did not even want to live in the world. 'Is it worth it, is it worth it!' the grieved young man kept exclaiming.”

“Препълненото сърце не може да претегля думите.”

“Nouă ne e penibil pînă şi să fim oameni, oameni cu trup şi sînge adevărat, propriu, ne e ruşine de asta, socotim acest lucru degradant şi tindem să fim habar n-am ce oameni — îndeobşte, ceva ce încă nu s-a pomenit. Sîntem născuţi morţi şi, de altminteri, de mult nu ne mai naştem din părinţi vii, lucru care ne place din ce în ce. Am prins gust. In curând vom născoci cumva şi naşterea nemijlocită din idee. ”