“... for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”

“And where love ends, hate begins”

“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal aims of humanity.

“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.”

“I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it right.”

“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.

“Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will.”

“what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?”

“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him”

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

“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.”

“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous.”

“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position"

“In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart.”

“He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [...] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around.”