“As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimescrawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do noteven notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly”

“the deep, pure blue stirs on one’s lips a smile, innocent as itself; like the clouds over the sky, and, as it were, with them, happy memories pass in slow procession over the soul”

“Fathers and SonsArkaday watching Katya's face as she accepts his marriage proposal:Anyone who has never seen such tears in the eyes of a beloved one cannot fathom to what extent, all overcome with gratitude and shame, a human being can be happy on earth.Bazarov on his death bed:I am done for. I've fallen under the wheel. And it transpires that there was no point in thinking about the future. It's an old story, is death, but to every man it comes anew.”

“Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!”

“Aceeași viață aici curgea neauzită, ca și apa printre ierburile mlaștinii. Și pînă seara tîrziu Lavrețki nu se putu smulge din contemplarea acestei vieți trecătoare, ca apa care curge.Durerile trecutului se topeau în sufletu-i ca zăpezile primăvara și - lucru ciudat ! - niciodată nu simți o iubire așa adîncă și de puternică pentru pămîntul patriei sale.”

“Death is like a fisherman who has caught a fish in his net and leaves it for a time in the water: the fish still swims about, but the net surrounds it, and the fisherman will take it when he wishes.”

“O youth! youth! you go your way heedless, uncaring – as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, 'I alone am alive – behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun .. like snow .. and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds – gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts – that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time.”