Ivan Turgenev

“ Panshin interrupted, and again he ran his fingers over the keys: "for the music and the books I bring you, for the wretched sketches with which I adorn your album, and so forth. I might do all that--and be an egoist all the same. I venture to think that you don't find me a bore, and don't think me a bad fellow, but still you suppose that I--what's the saying?--would sacrifice friend or father for the sake of a witticism."
"You are careless and forgetful, like all men of the world," observed Lisa, "that is all." ”

“ You can never sit with your hands idle. Well, if you like let us sketch, since it's not quite dark. Perhaps the other muse, the muse of painting--what was her name? I have forgotten... will be more propitious to me. Where's your album? I remember, my landscape there is not finished."
Lisa went into the other room to fetch the album, and Panshin, left alone, drew a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, and rubbed his nails and looked as it were critically at his hands. He had beautiful white hands; on the second finger of his left hand he wore a spiral gold ring. Lisa came back ”

“ With whatever subject he began a conversation, he generally ended by talking of himself, and the subject was changed by him so easily, so smoothly and genially, that it seemed unconscious.
"In your own household, for instance," he went on, "your mother certainly wishes me well, she is so kind ”