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A thousand times I've dreamed of it, tens of thousands of times, here at this very table, here in this ramshackle coop, and now it's finally sinking in, I'm going to travel, get away from here, be free, and yet— Mother's right—why is it I'm not happy? How come I'm not ready?

And so it is that when we are unhappy we more strongly feel the unhappiness of others; feeling is
not shattered, but becomes concentrated

‘I was thinking about you,’ she said to me after a minute’s silence, ‘you’re so kind that I would have to be made of stone not to feel it. Do you know what just occurred to me? I was comparing the two of you. Why isn’t he – you? Why isn’t he like you? He’s not as good as you, even though I love him more than you.’

‘Do you know why I’m so happy?’ she said, ‘so happy to look at you? Why I love you so today?’

‘Well?’ I asked, and my heart began to tremble.

‘I love you because you didn’t fall in love with me. Why, someone else in your place would have started bothering me, pestering me, sighing, falling ill, but you’re such a dear!’

‘Oh, Nastenka! You know, we thank some people for merely living at the same time as we do. I thank you for the fact that I met you, that I will remember you for all my life!’

I need advice that is heartfelt and brotherly, as though you had loved me all your life!’

‘All right, Nastenka, all right!’ I cried out in delight, ‘and if I’d already loved you for twenty years, I still couldn’t have loved you more than I do right now!’

‘Now, stop trying to make me feel sorry for you!’ Nastenka said.

But you mustn't fall in love with me, I beg you!

“Don't be vexed; I am only laughing at your being your own enemy”

I don't know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.

I walked along singing, for when I am happy I am always humming to myself like every happy man who has no friend or acquaintance with whom to share his joy. Suddenly I had a most unexpected adventure.

I walked along singing, for when I am happy I am always humming to myself like every happy man who has no friend or acquaintance with whom

For any object within this sphere which is used up or worn out or lost is replaced by another identical object, requisitioned and delivered by the appropriate agency, thus providing the inconstant world with an example of the superiority of the powers that be. The substance passes, the form remains.

Within this official area sanctified by the bureaucratic aristocracy, no visible change is allowed. The eternal law of growth and decline is suspended at the barrier of officialdom; while outside, trees come into bloom and become bare, children grow up and die old and gray, buildings fall into ruin and rise again in another form, the bureaucracy demonstrates its more than earthly power by staying the same forever.

You have asked for a barber, and God has sent you a barber who is also an astrologer and a physician, versed in the arts of alchemy, astrology, grammar, lexi-cography, logic, scholastic disputation, rhetoric, arithmetic, algebra, and history, as well as the traditions of the Prophet.

O my lord, eight degrees and six minutes elapsed of this day, which is Friday, the eighteenth of Safar, in the six hundred and fifty-third year of Hijra and the seven thousand three hundred and twentieth year of the Alexander era, and the planet now in the ascendant, according to the calculations on the astrolabe, is Mars, which is in conjunction with Mercury, a conjunction that is favorable for cutting hair.

It was a wonderful night, the kind of night, dear reader, which is only possible when we are young.

What a calamity! What a great calamity! Did I suffer such a painful beating and will my hand be cut off, just because I ate the ragout spiced with cumin and forgot to wash my hands? May god curse this ragout and its very existence.

This then is my adventure and strange story. Isn't it, O King, more amazing than the hunchback's story?
The king of China replied, "No, it is not more amazing than the hunchback's story, and i must hang all four of you for the hunchback's death."

"Tell me, brother, if you and I perform our wedding on the same day and consummate our marriage on the same night and if your wife and mine conceive on our wedding night and at the end of their pregnancy give birth on the same day and if your wife gives birth to a boy and my wife to a girl, tell me, will you marry your son to my daughter?"

Imagination takes pleasure in proving how incredible life can be, even in such novels that, without meaning to, she copies from art.

**after the publication of this book, there were news of similar real life stories…

"In the first place," he says, "it proves that outside of the law, and without those individual characteristics which, happy or sad as they may be, make us ourselves, we cannot live, dear Signor Pascal."

I had to remain in a fine situation, this parenthesis of two or three days, or perhaps even more: still dead, there at Miragno, as Mattia Pascal; and now dead, on the other hand, in Rome, as Adriano Meis.
Not knowing what to do, hoping to find some distraction from all my worries, I took these two dead men out for a walk in Pisa.