Quotes from Fathers and Sons

Quotations follow the Peter Carson translation (Penguin Classics, 2009) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.

2. 3

   A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.

3. 4

   Nature's not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.

4. 5

   However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of 'indifferent' nature; tell us too of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.

5. 6

   A good chemist is twenty times as useful as any poet.

6. 7

   I was needed by Russia.... No, it's clear, I wasn't needed. And who is needed? The shoemaker's needed, the tailor's needed, the butcher...

7. 8

   Death's an old joke, but it comes fresh to every one.

8. 9

   And as for the age, why should I depend upon it? Let it rather depend on me.

9. 10

   The tiny narrow space I occupy is so minutely small in comparison with the rest of space where I am not and which has nothing to do with me; and the portion of time in which it is my lot to live is so insignificant beside the eternity where I have not been and will not be . . .

10. 11

    "Aristocracy, Liberalism, progress, principles," Bazarov was saying meanwhile; "if you think of it, what a lot of foreign ... and useless words!"

11. 12

    To my mind, Raphael isn't worth a brass farthing, and they're no better than he.

12. 13

    When I meet a man who can hold his own beside me, then I'll change my opinion of myself.

13. 14

    A man's capable of understanding anything—how the æther vibrates, and what's going on in the sun—but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding.

14. 15

    We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.

15. 16

    Oh, my friend Arkady Nikolaich, one thing I implore of you; no beautiful talk.

16. 17

    Look, a dry maple leaf has broken off and is falling to the ground; its movements are exactly like a butterfly's flight. Isn't it strange? Such a gloomy dead thing so like the most care-free and lively one.