Ivan Turgenev

“ The thirst for happiness--again the same thirst for happiness.
"It seems Mihalevitch was right," he thought; "you wanted a second time to taste happiness in life," he said to himself, "you forgot that it is a luxury, an undeserved bliss, if it even comes once to a man. It was not complete, it was not genuine, you say; but prove your right to full, genuine happiness Look round and see who is happy, who enjoys life about you? ”

“ I saw quite close, I almost held in my hands the possibility of happiness for my whole life; yes, in the lottery too--turn the wheel a little and the beggar perhaps would be a rich man. If it does not happen, then it does not--and it's all over. ”

“ Lavretsky could not stay in the drawing-room; it seemed to him that his great-grandfather Andrey, was looking contemptuously from the canvas at his feeble descendant. "Bah: you swim in shallow water," the distorted lips seemed to be saying. "Is it possible," he thought, "that I cannot master myself, that I am going to give in to this . . . nonsense?" (Those who are badly wounded in war always call their wounds "nonsense." If man did not deceive himself, he could not live on earth.) "Am I really a boy? ”