People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we’re barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.
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!
All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sorts of difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.
Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.
I’m incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn’t want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I’d never experienced it.
