Philosophical Novels

"I looked out the window at the grey satin-hung mountain. It just isn't true all this, thought I; just isn't real, it doesn't go like this. This is only a stage where they act a bit at death. When men die it's in grim earnest—I should have liked to follow these young folk and shake them by the shoulders and say to them "It is so, isn't it? This is just a charade of death, and you mere facetious amateurs acting at dying? You'll get up again after and bow, won't you? People just don't die this way, from a bit of fever and noisy breathing—it takes bullets and wounds, I know that."

"It is easier to be alone without love."

"Pity is the most useless article in the world. [...] It's the reverse side of gloating, you ought to know that."

"They were thinking of bread, always and only of bread and occupation; but they came here to escape from their thoughts for a few hours—and amongst the clean-cut Roman heads and the imperishable grace of white, Greek female figures they wandered around with the dragging gait, the bowed shoulders of men who have no purpose—a shocking contrast, a cheerless picture of what humanity had been able, and unable, to achieve in a thousand years—the summit of eternal works of art, but not even bread enough for each of their brothers."

"Romantics are a following—not an escort"

"Haven't you ever observed how we live in an age of self-persecution? What a lot of things there are one might do that one doesn't—and yet why, God only knows. Work has become so tremendously important to-day, because so many have none, I suppose, that it kills everything else."

"But not enough has been thought about idleness. It is the foundation of all happiness and the end of all philosophy."

"All decent people are melancholy when evening comes. Not for any particular reason. Just on general grounds."

"A man can't have a row with a woman. You can be annoyed with them at the most." "Those are too fine distinctions for three o'clock in the morning. I've had rows with every one. If you don't have rows it's soon over."

""Do you love me really?" I asked. She shook her head. "Do you me?" "No. Lucky, isn't-it?" "Very." "Then nothing can happen to us, eh?" "Nothing," she replied and felt for my hand under the coats."

"Ferdinand fished a lace-wing out of his wine and wiped it carefully on the table. "Look at that now," said "he: "this fly. Gossamer is a floorcloth to it. And they live one day, and then it's over." He surveyed us all. "Do you know what is the most uncanny thing in the world, brothers?" "An empty glass," replied Lenz. Ferdinand obliterated him with a gesture. "The most degrading thing in the world for a man, Gottfried, is to be a joker." He turned to us again. "The most uncanny thing in the world, brothers, is time. Time. The monument through which we live and yet do not possess." He pulled a watch from his pocket and held it in front of Lenz's eyes. "This here, you upin-the-air romantic. This infernal machine, that ticks and ticks, that goes on ticking and that nothing can stop ticking. You can stay an avalanche, a landslide—but not this." "I don't want to," declared Lenz. "I want to grow peacefully old. And anyway, I like change." "It cannot abide man," said Grau ignoring him. "Neither can man abide it. So he has concocted a dream for himself. The old, pathetic, hopeless human dream, eternity." Gottfried laughed. "The worst disease in the world, Ferdinand, is thought. It's incurable." "If it were the only one, you'd be immortal," replied Grau. "You parcel of carbohydrates, calcium, phosphorus and a little iron, for a moment of time on the earth, Gottfried Lenz!" Gottfried beamed complacently. Ferdinand shook his lion head. "Life is a disease, brothers, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying—a little shove toward the end." "Every gulp, too," replied Lenz. "Pros't, Ferdinand. Death can be damned pleasant sometimes." Grau raised his glass. A smile passed over his big face like a soundless storm. "Pros't, Gottfried, you waterskipper on the running surface of time. What were the powers that move us thinking of when they made you, I wonder." "They must settle that among themselves," said Gottfried. "In any case it's not for you to speak disparagingly of such things. If human beings were immortal, you'd be out of work, you old parasite on death.""

"Tact is a tacit agreement to ignore mutual failings instead of ridding yourself of them. That is to say a despicable compromise."

"Only people who think they're not superficial, are"

"In times of realism be romantic, that's the trick. Opposites attract."

"Only the unhappy man appreciates happiness. The happy man is a mannequin for the life-feeling. He displays it merely; he doesn't possess it. Light doesn't shine in the light; it shines in the dark. A health to the dark. The man who has once been in the storm can't handle delicate electric apparatus any more. To hell with the storm. Blessed be our bit of life. And because we do love it we're not prepared to invest it in five per cents; we prefer to burn it. Drink, my boys. There are stars still shining that blew up ten thousand light-years ago. Drink while there is yet time. Long live unhappiness. Long live the dark."

"John limped on for about ten minutes. Suddenly he heard Mr. Mammon calling out to him. He stopped and turned round. ... 'What do you suppose they live on?' 'I never thought of that.' 'Every man of them earns his living by writing for me or having shares in my land. I suppose the "Clevers" is some nonsense they do in their spare time — when they're not beating up tramps,' and he glanced at John."

"'But how do you know there is no Landlord?' 'Christopher Columbus, Galileo, the earth is round, invention of printing, gunpowder!!' exclaimed Mr. Enlightenment in such a loud voice that the pony shied."

"That night he waited till his parents were asleep and then, putting some few needments together, he stole out by the back door and set his face to the West to seek for the Island."

"Much pain and hardship I have undergone: yet still my God has mingled sweet and sour, Oft-times he smil'd when he did seem to low'r ... The humble pilgrim Satan ne'er beguiles Humility the soul's sure refuge is, The lowest step that leads to highest bliss."

"...crawled he along, til he was almost got over, when he saw several boats making towards him... in the boats there were men... who hallooed and called after Tender-conscience; but he regarded them not... and... kept on his pace; but they rowed hard after him and shot several arrows at him... Now the names of these men that shot at Tender-conscience so fiercely were Worldly-honour, Arrogancy, Pride, Self-conceit, Vain-glory, and Shame..."

"God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportionable to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding; but divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and original of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but through faith in his divine revelation. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is nowhere said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship."

"...fasting was a duty often practised by the people of God, and by holy men under the law of Moses. And the gospel recommends it, from the beginning to the end, by the examples of Christ and John the Baptist, of Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles, as well as by their counsels and exhortations; nothing is more frequently inculcated than this duty of fasting, throughout the writings of the New Testament: And without all doubt, it is now as requisite as ever it was, since we are liable to the same infirmities, exposed to the same temptations, and beset with the same dangers as former Christians were; against all which evils fasting is proper remedy. Fasting mortifies the body, and tames concupiscence; it quenches lust, and kindles devotion; it is the handmaiden of prayer, and the nurse of meditation; it refines the understanding. subdues the passions, regulates the will, and sublimates the whole man to a more spiritual state of life: 'this the life of the angels, the enamel of the soul, the greatest advantage of religion, the best opportunity for retirements of devotion. While the smoke of carnal appetites is suppressed and distinguished, the heart breaks forth with holy fire, til it be burning like cherubim, and the most ecstasied order of pure and undiluted spirits. These are the proper and genuine effects of religious and frequent fasting, as they can witness who make it their practice."

"...as Tender-consicence went along, an old man met him along the way, whose names was Carnal-security, and he spoke to Tender-conscience... Intemperance... was the wife of Carnal-security. ...these two had built this palace to inveigle pilgrims, and seduce them out of their way, to the heavenly country: as the palace called Bountiful was built for the relief, comfort, and direction of pilgrims in their journey. But poor Tender-conscience knew nothing of all this. He that had so lately escaped the snare that Spiritual-pride had laid for him, was now caught in the gins of Carnal-security."

"This set of planks was called the bridge of Self-denial, and it reached quite over the valley of Humiliation. ...the air was all hung full of nets, and traps, and gins, which were placed so low that a man could not walk upright, but he must be caught in some of them; these were planted here by the prince of the power of the air, to catch such pilgrims in as were high minded, and walked with stretched outs necks..."

"“I mean that I'm acting for my own advantage. It's all the better for me if the peasants do their work better.”"

"“Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn't even shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?”"

"The chief reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem."

"“Your honors have been diverting yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?” added Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: “a great delicacy, I suppose.” And he shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave doubts whether this game were worth the candle."

"Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to him."

"“You talk of his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue. ... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that's another matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many such. ... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful of this world."

"She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was."

"“Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!”"

"The bailiff listened attentively, and obviously made an effort to approve of his employer's projects. But still he had that look Levin knew so well that always irritated him, a look of hopelessness and despondency. That look said: “That's all very well, but as God wills.”"

"“Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.”"

"In addition to his farming, which called for special attention in spring, and in addition to reading, Levin had begun that winter a work on agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account the character of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of the question, like the climate and the soil, and consequently deducing all the principles of scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate, but from the data of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable character of the laborer."

"Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not what form will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds, hardly knew what undertakings he was going to begin upon now in the farm work that was so dear to him."

"Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “that fashion not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. 'Timber, run to so many yards the acre.' He says those words without understanding them himself.”"

"This elder son, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He did not distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or little, passionate or passionless, lasting or passing, but he knew that this love affair was viewed with displeasure by those whom it was necessary to please, and therefore he did not approve of his brother's conduct."

"These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with her, horrified him, and however much he tried to disguise the fact, made him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can love when love has outweighed for her all the good things of life—and he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it."

"“The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in her soul, that's not my affair; that's the affair of her conscience, and falls under the head of religion,” he said to himself, feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred."

"There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case lying at the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly changed. He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in thought and feeling in another person's place was a spiritual exercise not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy."

"She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were said straight out to him: “Yes, it's shut up, and so it must be, and will be in future.” Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up."

"He began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had."

"Levin … remembered how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. …"

"Though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, wile calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived."

"“Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you.”"

"“I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: 'Dolly's a marvelous woman.' You have always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the heart.”"

"“You are one of those delightful women in whose company it's sweet to be silent as well as to talk.”"

"He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed."

"Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic."