Rex’s Reviews > The Same Old Story > Status Update

"If you married for love, love passes, and you just continue out of habit, and if you don't marry for love, the result is just the same: you get used to your wife. Love is one thing, and marriage is another, and the two things don't always coincide, and it's better when they don't."

*END*

What a tour de force from Ivan Goncharov! Overjoyed akin to after Oblamov!

"…When the struggle is over, before you know it, life itself is over: a man has worked, loved, experienced pleasure, suffered, done what he had to do - in other words, he has lived!"

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"I see in turmoil and trouble the hand of Providence, which faces man with an endless task — to keep moving forward, to aim higher than his appointed goal while struggling at every turn against illusory hopes, against painful impediments. I see too that this struggle and this turmoil are a necessary part of life, and that without them life would not be life, but stagnation, sleep…"

"Perhaps. But there was just one thing you left out of the picture, happiness. What you forgot was that it is a man's delusions, dreams, and hopes that make him happy — not reality."

"It would seem that the human heart is nothing if not perverse; if it weren't for this, there would be no need for us to have hearts at all."

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"When it comes to absurdities, you commit them with a flourish, but when something is simple and natural, then for you it's an absurdity."

"I am the only one who is to blame. To trust people, to look for sympathy - from whom? To bare my heart - to whom? I was surrounded by meanness, cravenness, pettiness, but I held on to my faith in the good, in valor and in constancy…"

"Oh, if only I could acquire feeling even at the cost of great pain - every kind of suffering that comes with passion - simply in order to live a full life, to feel that I'm alive instead of merely vegetating!"

"So you simply don't believe in a feeling if it's not expressed in the way you want? A strong feeling can remain hidden."

"To live such a full life…and suddenly to have it snatched away—and be left with nothing... And for me to have all my sincerity repaid with cunning, secretiveness and indifference— my God! Can there be any pain worse than this? It's easy enough to say about someone else, 'They've changed,' but to become the victim of it yourself!"