Fathers and Sons

“Our higher officials are fond as a rule of nonplussing their subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that end are rather various.”

“... a thin little woman with a pinched-up face, drawn together like a fist... “


“Who's crying there?' he added, after a short pause—'Mother? Poor thing! Whom will she feed now with her exquisite beetroot-soup?”

“The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed system, and the new mechanism worked, creaking like an ungreased wheel, warping and cracking like homemade furniture of unseasoned wood.”

“There's no help for it, Vasya! A son is a separate piece cut off. He's like the falcon that flies home and flies away at his pleasure; while you and I are like funguses in the hollow of a tree, we sit side by side, and don't move from our place. Only I am left you unchanged for ever, as you for me.'“

“The whole person of Arkady's uncle, with its aristocratic elegance, had preserved the gracefulness of youth and that air of striving upwards, away from earth, which for the most part is lost after the twenties are past.”

“People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch-tree.”

“A man's capable of understanding anything—how the æther vibrates, and what's going on in the sun—but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding.”