“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!”

“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”

“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.”

“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”

“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.”

“Every man hangs by a thread, any minute the abyss may open under his feet, and yet he must go and invent for himself all kinds of troubles and spoil his life.”