“That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.”

We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?

Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this – Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.

What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.

Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.

Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. “I don’t adopt any one’s ideas; I have my own.

I’m through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me…. If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.

Everyone needs help from everyone else.

Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don’t have far to go, either.

In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights – the right to swear and curse at your fate!

Illness isn’t the only thing that spoils the appetite.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.

Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.

The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.