* * * * *
When I married, I became an old woman.
* * * * *
He looked down on the world from the height of his baseness.
* * * * *
'Your fiancee is very pretty.' 'To me all women are alike.'
* * * * *
He dreamt of winning three hundred thousand in lottery, twice in succession, because three hundred thousand would not be enough for him.
* * * * *
N., a retired Councillor of State, lives in the country; he is sixty-six. He is educated, liberal-minded, reads, likes an argument. He learns from his guests that the new coroner Z. walks about with a slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, and lives with another man's wife. N. thinks all the time of Z.; he does nothing but talk about him, how he walks about in one slipper and lives with another man's wife; he talks of nothing else; at last he goes to sleep with his own wife (he has not slept with her for the last eight years), he is agitated and the whole time talks about Z. Finally he has a stroke, his arm and leg are paralyzed—and all this from agitation about Z. The doctor comes. With him too N. talks about Z. The doctor says that he knows Z., that Z. now wears two boots, his leg being well, and that he has married the lady.
* * * * *
I hope that in the next world I shall be able to look back at this life and say: 'Those were beautiful dreams….'
* * * * *
The squire N., looking at the undergraduate and the young girl, the children of his steward Z.: 'I am sure Z. steals from me, lives grandly on stolen money, the undergraduate and the girl know it or ought to know it; why then do they look so decent?'
* * * * *
She is fond of the word 'compromise,' and often uses it; 'I am incapable of compromise….' 'A board which has the shape of a parallelepiped.'
* * * * *
The hereditary honorable citizen Oziaboushkin always tries to make out that his ancestors had the right to the title of Count.
* * * * *
'He is a perfect dab at it.' 'O, O, don't use that expression; my mother is very particular.'
* * * * *
I have just married my third husband … the name of the first was Ivan Makarivitch … of the second Peter … Peter … I have forgotten.
* * * * *
The writer Gvozdikov thinks that he is very famous, that every one knows him. He arrives at S., meets an officer who shakes his hand for a long time, looking with rapture into his face. G. is glad, he too shakes hands warmly…. At last the officer: 'And how is your orchestra? Aren't you the conductor?'
* * * * *
Morning; M.'s mustaches are in curl papers.
* * * * *
And it seemed to him that he was highly respected and valued everywhere, anywhere, even in railway buffets, and so he always ate with a smile on his face.
* * * * *
The birds sing, and already it begins to seem to him that they do not sing, but whine.
* * * * *
N., father of a family, listens to his son reading aloud J.J. Rousseau to the family, and thinks: 'Well, at any rate, J.J. Rousseau had no gold medal on his breast, but I have one.'
* * * * *
N. has a spree with his step-son, an undergraduate, and they go to a brothel. In the morning the undergraduate is going away, his leave is up; N. sees him off. The undergraduate reads him a sermon on their bad behavior; they quarrel. N: 'As your father, I curse you.'—'And I curse you.'
* * * * *
A doctor is called in, but a nurse sent for.
* * * * *
N.N.V. never agrees with anyone: 'Yes, the ceiling is white, that can be admitted; but white, as far as is known, consists of the seven colors of the spectrum, and it is quite possible that in this case one of the colors is darker or brighter than is necessary for the production of pure white; I had rather think a bit before saying that the ceiling is white.'
* * * * *
He holds himself exactly as though he were an icon.
* * * * *
'Are you in love?'—'There's a little bit of that in it.'
* * * * *
Whatever happens, he says: 'It is the priests.'
* * * * *
Firzikov.
* * * * *
N. dreams that he is returning from abroad, and that at Verzhbolovo, in spite of his protests, they make him pay duty on his wife.
* * * * *
When that radical, having dined with his coat off, walked into his bedroom and I saw the braces on his back, it became clear to me that that radical is a bourgeois, a hopeless bourgeois.
* * * * *
Some one saw Z., an unbeliever and blasphemer, secretly praying in front of the icon in the cathedral, and they all teased him.
* * * * *
They called the manager 'four-funneled cruiser,' because he had already gone 'through the chimney' (bankrupt) four times.
* * * * *
He is not stupid, he was at the university, has studied long and assiduously, but in writing he makes gross mistakes.
* * * * *
Countess Nadin's daughter gradually turns into a housekeeper; she is very timid, and can only say 'No-o,' 'Yes-s,' and her hands always tremble. Somehow or other a Zemstvo official wished to marry her; he is a widower and she marries him, with him too it was 'Yes-s,' 'No-o'; she was very much afraid of her husband and did not love him; one day he happened to give a loud cough, it gave her a fright, and she died.
* * * * *
Caressing her lover: 'My vulture.'
* * * * *
For a play: If only you would say something funny. But for twenty years we have lived together and you have always talked of serious things; I hate serious things.
* * * * *
A cook, with a cigarette in her mouth, lies: 'I studied at a high school … I know what for the earth is round.'
* * * * *
'Society for finding and raising anchors of steamers and barges,' and the Society's agent at all functions
