Michaela

“To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist, he must lay aside his personal subjective standpoint and must understand that muck heaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that the evil passions are as inherent in life as the good ones.”
― Anton Chekhov

“While a man is living he is not conscious of his own life; it becomes audible to him, like a sound, after the lapse of time.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Diary of a Superfluous Man

“Ала в света нищо не е дълготрайно, затова и радостта във втората минута вече не е тъй жива, както в първата, в третата минута тя е още по-слаба и най-сетне незабелязано се слива с обикновеното настроение на душата, както кръгът, причинен от падане на камъче във вода, най-сетне се слива с гладката повърхнина.”
― Nikolai Gogol

“Little girls ought to be taught and brought up with boys, so that they might be always together. A woman ought to be trained so that she may be able, like a man, to recognise when she's wrong, or she always thinks she's in the right. Instil into a little girl from her cradle that a man is not first of all a cavalier or a possible lover, but her neighbour, her equal in everything. Train her to think logically, to generalise, and do not assure her that her brain weighs less than a man's and that therefore she can be indifferent to the sciences, to the arts, to the tasks of culture in general. The apprentice to the shoemaker or the house painter has a brain of smaller size than the grown-up man too, yet he works, suffers, takes his part in the general struggle for existence. We must give up our attitude to the physiological aspect, too -- to pregnancy and childbirth, seeing that in the first place women don't have babies every month; secondly, not all women have babies; and, thirdly, a normal countrywoman works in the fields up to the day of her confinement and it does her no harm. Then there ought to be absolute equality in everyday life. If a man gives a lady his chair or picks up the handkerchief she has dropped, let her repay him in the same way. I have no objection if a girl of good family helps me to put on my coat or hands me a glass of water --”
― Anton Chekhov