“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.”

“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”

“Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.”

“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”

“Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.”

“But what is chance? What is genius?The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of genius.To a heard of rams, that ram the herdsman dries each evening into a special enclosure to feed, and that becomes twice as fat as the others, must seem to be a genius.”

“It is said that one swallow does not make a summer, but can it be that because one swallow does not make a summer another swallow, sensing and anticipating summer, must not fly? If every blade of grass waited similarly summer would never occur. And it is the same with establishing the Kingdom of God: we must not think about whether we are the first or the thousandth swallow.”