Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov

“ Therefore one will fall to cursing life. And all because of a proud, independent striding through existence and a wilful ‘I will’! No; rather does one need to feel one’s way, to close one’s eyes, to avoid becoming either intoxicated with happiness or inclined to repine because it has escaped one. Yes, that is life. Who was it first pictured life as happiness and gratification? The fool! ‘Life is a duty,’ says Olga. ‘Life is a grave obligation which must be fulfilled as such.’” He heaved a profound sigh. ”

“ Sometimes, too, when I am asleep, some one seems to come and strike me a blow upon the back and head, so that I leap up with a start.”
“Listen, Ilya,” said Schtoltz gravely. “I tell you, in all seriousness, that if you do not change your mode of life you will soon be seized with dropsy or a stroke. As for your future, I have no hopes of it at all. If Olga, that angel, could not bear you from your swamp on her wings, neither shall I succeed in doing so. However, to the end I shall stand by you: and when I say that, I am voicing not only my own wish, but also that of Olga. ”

“ Suppose that, fearing no rival, you were to go to sleep by my side (as you do on your sofa at home) , and that my voice were to become powerless to wake you? Suppose that your present swelling of heart were to pass away, and your dressing-gown come to acquire more value in your eyes than myself? Often and often do such questions prevent my sleeping; yet I do not, on that account, trouble you with conjectures as to the future. Always I hope for better things, for, with me, happiness has cast out fear. Only for one thing have I long been sitting and waiting—namely, for happiness ”

“ Never a false note has that heart sounded; never a particle of mire has there clung to his soul; never a specious lie has he heeded; never to the false road has he been seduced by any possible attraction. Even were a whole ocean of evil and rascality to come seething about him, and even were the whole world to become infected with poison and be turned upside down, Oblomov would yet refuse to bow to the false image, and his soul would remain as clean, as radiant, and as without spot as ever. ”

“ The love beheld in that vision was a love which, unfading and indestructible, expressed itself on the features of husband and wife only during seasons of mutual sorrow, and shone forth only in slow, silent glances of mutual sympathy, and voiced itself only in a constant, joint endurance of the trials of life as he and she restrained the tears, and choked back the sobs, which those trials called forth. ”

“ Again the charming seductiveness of sleep-waking enfolded him in its embrace. He pictured to himself a small colony of friends who should come and settle in the villages and farms within a radius of fifteen or twenty versts of his country house. Every day they should visit one another’s houses—whether to dine or to sup or to dance; until everywhere around him he would be able to see only bright faces framed in sunny days—faces which should be ever free of care and wrinkles, and round, and merry, and ruddy, and double-chinned, and of unfailing appetite. ”

“ For him the legend confounded itself with life, and, unconsciously, he found himself regretting that the legend differed from life, and that life differed from the legend. Involuntarily he would dream of Militrissa Kirbitievna, and feel attracted towards the country whereof nothing was known except that folk there went for walks, and were free from sorrow and care. Never could he rid himself of a longing to spend his days in lying upon the stove (even as the favourite of the legend had done) , and to be dressed in ready-made, unearned clothes, and to eat at the expense of a benevolent witch. ”

“ No wonder that in these days folk say that the people used to be more robust!
Yes, it was more robust, for the reason that in those days parents did not hurry to explain to a boy the meaning of life, and to prepare him for life as for something at once difficult and solemn. No, they did not weary a child with books which would cloud his head with questions likely to devour the heart and the intellect, and to shorten existence. ”

“ Olga has kept silence, and I too have breathed not a word. So much for stolen meetings at dawn and sunset, for passionate glances, for the wizardry of song! Ah, those poems of love! Never do they end save in disaster. One should go beneath the wedding canopy before one attempts to swim in an atmosphere of roses. To think that before any preparations have been made—before even an answer has come, from the estate, or I have obtained either money or a flat—I should have to go to her aunt, and to say: ‘This is my betrothed!’ At all costs must I put a stop to these rumours. Marriage! ”

“ Too vividly they remind him of his own frail build; too painfully they cause him to go in fear for his life. And over the summits of those crags and precipices the heavens look so remote and unattainable that they seem to have become removed out of the ken of humanity.
Not so that peaceful corner of the earth upon which our hero, in his slumber, opened his eyes. There, on the contrary, the heavens seemed to hug the earth—not in order that they might the better aim their thunderbolts, but in order that they might the closer enfold it in a loving embrace. ”

“ Once known, his personality is an entity for which one’s love could never die.... Is that so? Have I divined aright?”
She said nothing: her eyes were fixed intently upon her work. Ar length she arose, ran to her husband, gazed into his eyes for a moment as she embraced him, and let her head sink forward upon his shoulder. During those few moments there had arisen to her memory Oblomov’s kindly, pensive face, his tender, deprecating gaze, and the shy, wistful smile with which, at their last parting, he had met her reproaches. ”