Book: The fight

He played his Golden pince-nez and talked about women. Romashov, my dear, if animals, like dogs, had the gift of understanding human speech and if one of them heard yesterday Diez, by God, she would leave the room in shame. You know Dietz is a good person, and that's all good, Romashov: bad people do not. But otherwise he is ashamed to talk about women, ashamed of the fear of losing his reputation as a cynic, the libertine and the winner. Here are some common cheating, some exaggerated male bravado, a kind of boastful contempt for the woman. And all this is because for most in love and in possession of a woman, you know, in the final possession, - lurks something crudely animal, something selfish, just for yourself, something sacred-profane, lascivious and shameful - damn! I don't know how to Express it. And that is why most after possession comes the coldness, the disgust, the hatred. That is why people have taken to love the night, as well as for theft and murder... Then, my dear, nature gave people some kind of ambush with bait and a noose.

Something to die for? It is nonsense to die... my heart aches...

The whole company is in the leg, one Lieutenant keeps pace.

- I don't want cheating... well, no, I'm above cheating, but I don't want cowardice. Cheating - always cowardice.

Dive boldly into life, it will not deceive you. It looks like a huge building with thousands of rooms in which light, singing, wonderful pictures, intelligent, elegant, people, laughter, dancing, love - all that is great and terrible in the art. And in that Palace is still seen only one dark, cramped closet, all in the copy and in the web, and you are afraid to get out of it.

That's bad when you are not a thought, but it leads you.

If you think so, then it is better not to serve. And indeed in our case are not supposed to think.

How can there be a class that in time of peace, without bringing any tithe use, eating someone else's bread and alien meat, dressed in the wrong clothes, living in other people's homes, and in time of war is pointless to kill and maim the same people as they are?

Put you in jail forever, and all my life you will see the slits from only two old pitted brick... No, even, put that in your prison there is not a single spark of light, not a sound - nothing! Still, is it possible to compare with the monstrous horror of death? You are left with the thought, imagination, memory, creativity - after all, we can live with it. And you may even be moments of delight from the pleasures of life.

She stopped loving me for what I drink... However, I don't know, maybe I drink because she stopped loving me.

It [love] - a lot of choices. Here's an example: all people have a musical ear, but to millions he is like a fish like cod or captain Vasilchenko, and one of that million - Beethoven. So in everything, in poetry, in art, in wisdom... And love, I tell you, has its peaks, accessible only to units of millions.

Hit only one, who is afraid that he will beat.

I know, I know, my dear, that it the aggravation of feelings, all this spiritual insight - alas! - nothing like the physiological effects of alcohol on the nervous system.

Do you understand how much variety happiness and enchanting torment is inseparable, hopeless love? When I was younger, I had one dream: to fall in love with unattainable, extraordinary woman, this, you know that I never can be shared. To fall in love and all life, all thought to devote to it.