Leo Tolstoy

“ The rusty alpaca cassocks with their frayed linings, the worn black leather bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the dull-green plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and, above all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, all spoke to me intimately of some new life hitherto unknown to me--a life of unity and prayer, of calm, restful happiness.
"The months, the years, may pass," I thought to myself, "but he remains alone--always at peace, always knowing that his conscience is pure before God, that his prayer will be heard by Him." ”

“ However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet men and women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels to fetch the day`s water supply; until at length, at the cross streets near the Arbat Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall and a baker was just opening his shop, I espied an old cabman shaking himself after indulging in a nap on the box of his bescratched old blue-painted, hobble-de-hoy wreck of a drozhki. ”

“ He seemed barely awake as he asked twenty copecks as the fare to the monastery and back, but came to himself a moment afterwards, just as I was about to get in, and, touching up his horse with the spare end of the reins, started to drive off and leave me. "My horse wants feeding," he growled, "I can`t take you, barin. ”