Fathers And Sons Quotes
"You see, I like to open them, and then to observe what their insides are doing. You and I are frogs too, except that we walk upon our hind legs."
"You will not find time hang heavy upon your hands."
"Ah, you elderly Romanticists! You over-develop the nervous system until the balance is upset."
"I quite agree with you. You see, the reason is that you were born here, and that therefore the place is bound to have for you a special significance."
"Pray do me a favour. Hitherto I had not warned you that——"
"I believe he has a small property, and used to be an army doctor."
"A Nihilist is a man who declines to bow to authority, or to accept any principle on trust, however sanctified it may be."
"No, a man who treats things solely from the critical point of view."
"Without principles it is impossible to take a single step in life, or to draw a single breath."
"God send you health and a general's rank, Messieurs Nihil—how do you pronounce it?"
"I believe in nothing at all. What after all, is science—that is to say, science in the mass?"
"A good chemist is worth a score of your poets."
"Always children are quiet with me. You see, I know how to handle them."
"Nature is rubbish—at least in the sense in which you understand her. She is not a church, but a workshop wherein man is the labourer."
"We demolish because we are a force," interposed Arkady.
"Even as I have said. When you want to put a piece of bread into your mouth, do you need logic for the purpose? What have these abstractions to do with ourselves?"
"That very sense of dignity at which this gentleman pokes such bitter fun will keep me from forgetting myself."
"You see, I had business to do with my father, and he invited me to pay him a visit."
"I have met you before, Bazarov," she repeated. "Will you have a cigar?"
"I thank you," interposed Sitnikov (who had deposited his person in an armchair, and crossed his legs).
"No; it is merely that I love the comforts of life," protested Sitnikov pompously.
"No, I do not," he replied. "On the contrary, I think that, even from the chemical point of view, a piece of meat is better than a piece of bread."
"Yes, I. And please guess its use. It is for making unbreakable dolls and pipe-bowls."
"My name is Arkady Nikolaievitch Kirsanov," Arkady answered for himself. "And my particular line is doing nothing at all."
"Because I have just heard that you are again standing up for Georges Sand, that played-out woman."
"Then you study chemistry?" she exclaimed. "Chemistry is my passion also."
"I agree with no man's opinions," he remarked. "I have some of my own."
"Instead of attacking us, people ought to read Michel's De l'Amour. What a wonderful work it is! Let us talk of love."
"Never when I hear my sex abused can I listen with indifference," resumed Evdoksia. "It is all too horrible, too horrible!"
"The only thing to be done with them is to hold them in contempt," agreed Sitnikov.
"What is there to say concerning love?" at length said Bazarov.
"I do not reject them," he added in a lower tone.
"A scourge is not a bad thing in its proper place," observed Bazarov.
"I am not defending them at all," said Madame Kukshin. "I am merely standing up for the rights of women—rights which I have sworn to defend to the last drop of my blood."
"Scarcely need they desire to have anything conveyed to them by our conversation," remarked Bazarov.
"True, if she had been dowered with less wealth and independence, she might have plunged into the fray, and learnt the nature of passion; but, as things stood, she took life unhastily, and, though often finding it tedious, spent her days in a deliberate, rarely agitated manner."
"Again, like all women who have never known what it is to fall in love, she was sensible of a persistent yearning for something wholly undefined."
"Yet not for the sake of testing her, nor of seeing what might possibly come of it, had he mentioned his purposed departure."
"As we know, time either flies like a bird or crawls like a snail."
"That you and I do not get on together?" she repeated; after which she stretched her limbs, smiled, clasped her hands behind her head."
"But to Bazarov this measured, slightly formal regularity was not wholly agreeable."
"The real cause of the innovation was the feeling which Madame Odintsov inspired in Bazarov's breast."
"For a long time past I have been wishing to have this out with you."
"I know only of one condition under which I could remain. And that condition is never likely to arise."
"Yet I could not have foreseen the whole dénouement."
"Let me recall to you some words of your own."
"We need the Sitnikovs of this world. Such donkeys are absolutely necessary to us, to me."
"Then you and I are the gods?" he said aloud. "Or are you a god, and I a donkey?"
"Evgenii, take me with you. I should like to come to your place, after all."
"By a single thread does the destiny of every man hang, and at any moment there may open before him an abyss into which he and his may plunge."
"Never ought a man to touch such follies. Always he ought, as the excellent Spanish saying has it, 'to remain as the beasts of the field.'"
"The sense of relief when such society is abandoned is like taking a cold bath on a summer's day."
"One ought so to order one's life that every moment in it shall be of significance."
"Instincts only exist, and upon them everything depends."
"In the occupation of lying on the earth and gazing at the heavens. For my part, I believe that such an occupation can have its uses."
"The greatest thing in the world is one's freedom."
"As long as one is young one can do what one wants to do."
"When you read you twitch your little nose most charmingly!"
"As long as one is young one can do what one wants to do—one can walk about, and carry things, and not be dependent upon other folk."
"Like ourselves, that peasant has risen early," thought Bazarov. "But whereas he has risen to work, we——!"
"Yet, even though we intend to exterminate one another, why should we not enjoy our jest, and thus combine utile with dulce?"
"No," he said. "Run for a little water, and he will outlive us both."
"A union of self-respect with submission—that is what I best understand, that is what spells true happiness."
"For it was all a dream, was it not? And who remembers dreams?"
"And love—well, love is a mere empirical sentiment."
"The only reason why I am eating nothing is that I am not hungry."
"No longer am I the presumptuous lad who came here a short while ago: not for nothing have I attained my twenty-third year."
"Though an hour was still wanting to luncheon time, the dew and the freshness of the morning had already given place to the sultriness and the aridity of noontide."
"In my opinion, it is the duty of an honourable man to be frank with those who, with those who—in short, with those who stand nearest to him in life."
"I shall love you always, and beyond recall; nor shall I ever love another woman."
"And though I still wish to be of use in life, though I still wish to consecrate the whole of my faculties to the service of Truth, I no longer seek my ideals where I was wont to do—they appear to me to stand much nearer home."
"The man who has not seen such tears in the eyes of his beloved does not know the height of happiness to which, with mingled joy and gratitude and modesty, a woman can attain."
"Evgenii, you are better now, and with God's help will recover; but do, in any case, seize this hour to comfort me and your mother by fulfilling all the duties of a Christian."
"To comfort you, I will not altogether refuse your request; but, since you yourself have said that I am better, surely there can be no need for hurry?"