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Cлово "VANITY"

Часть текста: made Yulia Mihailovna seriously uneasy. Indeed, things were not altogether satisfactory. Our mild governor had left the affairs of the province a little out of gear; at the moment we were threatened with cholera; serious outbreaks of cattle plague had appeared in several places; fires were prevalent that summer in towns and villages; whilst among the peasantry foolish rumours of incendiarism grew stronger and stronger. Cases of robbery were twice as numerous as usual. But all this, of course, would have been perfectly ordinary had there been no other and more weighty reasons to disturb the equanimity of Audrey Antonovitch, who had till then been in good spirits. What struck Yulia Mihailovna most of all was that he became more silent and, strange to say, more secretive every day. Yet it was hard to imagine what he had to hide. It is true that he rarely opposed her and as a rule followed her lead without question. At her instigation, for instance, two or three regulations of a risky and hardly legal character were introduced with the object of strengthening the authority of the governor. There were several ominous instances of transgressions being condoned with the same end in view; persons who deserved to be sent to prison and Siberia were, solely because she insisted, recommended for promotion. Certain complaints and inquiries were deliberately and systematically ignored. All this came out later on. Not only did Lembke sign everything, but he did not even go into the...

2. Dostoevsky. Notes from the Underground (English. Записки из подполья). Part I. Chapter XI

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Часть текста: I am lying! I am lying because I know myself that it is not underground that is better, but something different, quite different, for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find! Damn underground! I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I myself believed in anything of what I have just written. I swear to you, gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have written that I really believe. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time I feel and suspect that I am lying like a cobbler. "Then why have you written all this?" you will say to me. "I ought to put you underground for forty years without anything to do and then come to you in your cellar, to find out what stage you have reached! How can a man be left with nothing to do for forty years?" "Isn't that shameful, isn't that humiliating?" you will say, perhaps, wagging your heads contemptuously. "You thirst for life and try to settle the problems of life by a logical tangle. And how persistent, how insolent are your sallies, and at the same time what a scare you are in! You talk nonsense and are pleased with it; you say impudent things and are in continual alarm and...

3. Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (English. Братья Карамазовы). Part IV. Book X. The Boys. Chapter 6.Precocity

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Часть текста: again, faltering and uncertain. "I have heard you are a mystic and have been in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but... that hasn't put me off. Contact with real life will cure you.... It's always so with characters like yours." "What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?" Alyosha was rather astonished. "Oh, God and all the rest of it." "What, don't you believe in God?" "Oh, I've nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but... I admit that He is needed... for the order of the universe and all that... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented," added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might think he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he was "grown up." "I haven't the slightest desire to show off my knowledge to him," Kolya thought indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly annoyed. "I must confess I can't endure...

4. Dostoevsky. The Crocodile (English. Крокодил)

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Часть текста: mind), and was consequently free from his official duties and had nothing whatever to do that morning, he offered no objection to his wife's irresistible fancy, but was positively aflame with curiosity himself. "A capital idea!" he said, with the utmost satisfaction. "We'll have a look at the crocodile! On the eve of visiting Europe it is as well to acquaint ourselves on the spot with its indigenous inhabitants." And with these words, taking his wife's arm, he set off with her at once for the Arcade. I joined them, as I usually do, being an intimate friend of the family. I have never seen Ivan Matveitch in a more agreeable frame of mind than he was on that memorable morning-how true it is that we know not beforehand the fate that awaits us! On entering the Arcade he was at once full of admiration for the splendours of the building and, when we reached the shop in which the monster lately arrived in Petersburg was being exhibited, he volunteered to pay the quarter-rouble for me to the crocodile owner - a thing which had never happened before. Walking into a little room, we observed that besides the crocodile there were in it parrots of the species known as cockatoo, and also a group of monkeys in a special case in a recess. Near the entrance, along the left wall stood a big tin tank that looked like a bath covered with a thin iron grating, filled with water to the depth of two inches. In this shallow pool was kept a huge crocodile, which lay like a log absolutely motionless and apparently deprived of all its faculties by our damp climate, so inhospitable to foreign visitors. This monster at first aroused no special interest in any one of us. "So this is the crocodile!" said Elena Ivanovna, with a pathetic cadence of regret. ...

5. Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (English. Братья Карамазовы). Part II. Book V. Pro and Contra. Chapter 6.For Awhile a Very Obscure One

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Часть текста: that day to make a new start and enter upon a new, unknown future. He would again be as solitary as ever, and though he had great hopes, and great -- too great -- expectations from life, he could not have given any definite account of his hopes, his expectations, or even his desires. Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something quite different. "Is it loathing for my father's house?" he wondered. "Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it's the last time I shall cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it's not that either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had with him? For so many years I've been silent with the whole world and not deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like that." certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful inexperience and vanity -- vexation at having failed to express himself, especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had certainly been reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must have done indeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. "I feel sick with depression and yet I can't tell what I want. Better not think, perhaps." Ivan tried "not to think," but that, too, was no use. What made his depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of casual, external character -- he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to be standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude itself upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or conversation that for a long time one does not notice...

6. Dostoevsky. The Possessed (English. Бесы)

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Часть текста: (English. Бесы) translated by Constance Garnett THE POSSESSED (The Devils) A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY “Strike me dead, the track has vanished, Well, what now? We've lost the way, Demons have bewitched our horses, Led us in the wilds astray. What a number! Whither drift they? What's the mournful dirge they sing? Do they hail a witch's marriage Or a goblin's burying?” A. Pushkin. “And there was one herd of many swine feeding on this mountain; and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. “Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake and were choked. “When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. “Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.” Luke, ch. viii. 32-37. PART I CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY SOME DETAILS OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF THAT HIGHLY RESPECTED GENTLEMAN STEFAN TEOFIMOVITCH VERHOVENSKY. IN UNDERTAKING to describe the recent and strange incidents in our town, till lately wrapped in uneventful obscurity, I find' myself forced in absence of literary skill to begin my story rather far back, that is to say, with certain biographical details concerning that talented and highly-esteemed gentleman, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky. I trust that these details may at least serve as an introduction, while my projected story itself will come later. I will say at once that Stepan Trofimovitch had always filled a particular role among us, that ...

7. Dostoevsky. A Raw Youth (English. Подросток). Part II. Chapter VI

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Часть текста: servant, if I am right and she is to blame it's the end of everything! In any case it's the end of everything! What am I going to lose? I can lose nothing. I'll go! I'll go!" I shall never forget and I recall with pride that I did NOT go! It will never be known to anyone, it will die with me, but it's enough that I know of it and at such a moment I was capable of an honourable impulse. "This is a temptation, and I will put it behind me," I made up my mind at last, on second thoughts. They had tried to terrify me with a fact, but I refused to believe it, and had not lost my faith in her purity! And what had I to go for, what was there to find out about? Why was she bound to believe in me as I did in her, to have faith in my "purity," not to be afraid of my "impulsiveness" and not to provide against all risks with Tatyana? I had not yet, as far as she could see, deserved her confidence. No matter, no matter that she does not know that I am worthy of it, that I am not seduced by "temptations," that I do not believe in malicious calumnies against her; I know it and I shall respect myself for it. I shall respect my own feeling. Oh, yes, she had allowed me to utter everything before Tatyana, she had allowed Tatyana to be there, she knew that Tatyana was sitting there listening (for she was incapable of not listening); she knew that she was laughing at me out there,--that...

8. Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (English. Братья Карамазовы). Part IV. Book XI. Ivan. Chapter 4. A Hymn and a Secret

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Часть текста: and a Secret Chapter 4 A Hymn and a Secret IT was quite late (days are short in November) when Alyosha rang at the prison gate. It was beginning to get dusk. But Alyosha knew that he would be admitted without difficulty. Things were managed in our little town, as everywhere else. At first, of course, on the conclusion of the preliminary inquiry, relations and a few other persons could only obtain interviews with Mitya by going through certain inevitable formalities. But later, though the formalities were not relaxed, exceptions were made for some, at least, of Mitya's visitors. So much so, that sometimes the interviews with the prisoner in the room set aside for the purpose were practically tete-a-tete. These exceptions, however, were few in number; only Grushenka, Alyosha and Rakitin were treated like this. But the captain of the police, Mihail Mihailovitch, was very favourably disposed to Grushenka. His abuse of her at Mokroe weighed on the old man's conscience, and when he learned the whole story, he completely changed his view of her. And strange to say, though he was firmly persuaded of his guilt, yet after Mitya was once in prison, the old man came to take a more and more lenient view of him. "He was a man of good heart, perhaps," he thought, "who had come to grief from drinking and dissipation." His first horror had been succeeded by pity. As...

9. Dostoevsky. The Possessed (English. Бесы). Part III. Сhapter III. A romance ended

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Часть текста: round her neck. Some locks of her luxuriant hair had come loose and showed below the shawl on her right shoulder. Her face looked weary and careworn. but her eyes glowed under her frowning brows. She went up to the window again and pressed her burning forehead against the cold pane. The door opened and Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch came in. “I've sent a messenger on horseback,” he said. “In ten minutes we shall hear all about it, meantime the servants say that part of the riverside quarter has been burnt down, on the right side of the bridge near the quay. It's been burning since eleven o'clock; now the fire is going down.” He did not go near the window, but stood three steps behind her; she did not turn towards him. “It ought to have been light an hour ago by the calendar, and it's still almost night,” she said irritably. “'Calendars always tell lies,'” he observed with a polite smile, but, a little ashamed; he made haste to add: “It's dull to live by the calendar, Liza.” And he relapsed into silence, vexed at the ineptitude of the second sentence. Liza gave a wry smile. “You are in such a melancholy mood that you cannot even find words to speak to me. But you need not trouble, there's a point in what you said. I always live by the calendar. Every step I take is regulated by the calendar. Does that surprise you?” She turned quickly from the window ...

10. Dostoevsky. The Idiot (English. Идиот). Part IV. Chapter VII

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Часть текста: The prince quickly turned towards him, and listened. The conversation had been on the subject of land, and the present disorders, and there must have been something amusing said, for the old man had begun to laugh at his companion's heated expressions. The latter was describing in eloquent words how, in consequence of recent legislation, he was obliged to sell a beautiful estate in the N. province, not because he wanted ready money--in fact, he was obliged to sell it at half its value. "To avoid another lawsuit about the Pavlicheff estate, I ran away," he said. "With a few more inheritances of that kind I should soon be ruined!" At this point General Epanchin, noticing how interested Muishkin had become in the conversation, said to him, in a low tone: "That gentleman--Ivan Petrovitch--is a relation of your late friend, Mr. Pavlicheff. You wanted to find some of his relations, did you not?" The general, who had been talking to his chief up to this moment, had observed the prince's solitude and silence, and was anxious to draw him into the conversation, and so introduce him again to the notice of some of the important personages. "Lef Nicolaievitch was a ward of Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff, after the death of his own parents," he remarked, meeting Ivan Petrovitch's eye. "Very happy to meet him, I'm sure," remarked the latter. "I remember Lef Nicolaievitch well. When General Epanchin introduced us just now, I recognized you at once, prince. You are very little changed, though I saw you last as a child of some ten or eleven years old. There was something in your features, I suppose, that--" "You saw me as a child!" exclaimed the prince, with surprise. "Oh! yes, long ago," continued Ivan ...

Поиск по творчеству и критикеCлово "VANITY"

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Cлово "VANITY"