* * * * *
The University brings out all abilities, including stupidity.
* * * * *
Taking into consideration, dear sir, as a result of this view, dear
sir....
* * * * *
The most intolerable people are provincial celebrities.
* * * * *
Owing to our flightiness, because the majority of us are unable and
unaccustomed to think or to look deeply into life's phenomena, nowhere
else do people so often say: "How banal!" nowhere else do people
regard so superficially, and often contemptuously other people's
merits or serious questions. On the other hand nowhere else does the
authority of a name weigh so heavily as with us Russians, who have
been abased by centuries of slavery and fear freedom....
* * * * *
A doctor advised a merchant to eat soup and chicken. The merchant
thought the advice ironical. At first he ate a dinner of botvinia and
pork, and then, as if recollecting the doctor's orders, ordered soup
and chicken and swallowed them down too, thinking it a great joke.
* * * * *
Father Epaminond catches fish and puts them in his pocket; then, when
he gets home, he takes out a fish at a time, as he wants it, and fries
it.
* * * * *
The nobleman X. sold his estate to N. with all the furniture according
to an inventory, but he took away everything else, even the oven
dampers, and after that N. hated all noblemen.
* * * * *
The rich, intellectual X., of peasant origin, implored his
son:--"Mike, don't get out of your class. Be a peasant until you die,
do not become a nobleman, nor a merchant, nor a bourgeois. If, as
you say, the Zemstvo officer now has the right to inflict corporal
punishment on peasants, then let him also have the right to punish
you." He was proud of his peasant origin, he was even haughty about
it.
* * * * *
They celebrated the birthday of an honest man. Took the opportunity
to show off and praise one another. Only towards the end of the dinner
they suddenly discovered that the man had not been invited; they had
forgotten.
* * * * *
A gentle quiet woman, getting into a temper, says: "If I were a man, I
would just bash your filthy mug."
* * * * *
A Mussulman for the salvation of his soul digs a well. It would be a
pleasant thing if each of us left a school, a well, or something like
that, so that life should not pass away into eternity without leaving
a trace behind it.
* * * * *
We are tired out by servility and hypocrisy.
* * * * *
N. once had his clothes torn by dogs, and now, when he pays a call
anywhere, he asks: "Aren't there any dogs here?"
* * * * *
A young pimp, in order to keep up his powers, always eats garlic.
* * * * *
School guardian. Widowed priest plays the harmonium and sings: "Rest
with the saints."
* * * * *
In July the red bird sings the whole morning.
* * * * *
"A large selection of _cigs"_[1]--so read X. every day when he went
down the street, and wondered how one could deal only in _cigs_ and
who wanted them. It took him thirty years before he read it correctly:
"A large selection of cigars."
[Footnote 1: _Cigs_ in Russian is a kind of fish.]
* * * * *
A bride to an engineer: a dynamite cartridge filled with
one-hundred-rouble notes.
* * * * *
"I have not read Herbert Spencer. Tell me his subjects. What does
he write about?" "I want to paint a panel for the Paris exhibition.
Suggest a subject." (A wearisome lady.)
* * * * *
The idle, so-called governing, classes cannot remain long without war.
When there is no war they are bored, idleness fatigues and irritates
them, they do not know what they live for; they bite one another, try
to say unpleasant things to one another, if possible with impunity,
and the best of them make the greatest efforts not to bore the others
and themselves. But when war comes, it possesses all, takes hold of
the imagination, and the common misfortune unites all.
* * * * *
An unfaithful wife is a large cold cutlet which one does not want to
touch, because some one else has had it in his hands.
* * * * *