Тяжелые времена. Рассказы и очерки

In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.

The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends.

I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other set, and just as much harm as any other set.

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder.

Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.

Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.

духовное детство еще более великое благо и столь бесценный клад, что малейшие крохи его — источник радости и утешения для мудрейших из мудрых.

Людям нужны развлечения. Не могут они наукам учиться без передышки, и не могут они вечно работать без отдыха; уж такие они от рождения. ...ищите в нах доброе, не ищите худого!

— Ни один человек, знакомый с фактами, установленными Гарвеем относительно кровообращения, не мог бы усомниться в наличии у меня сердца.
— Доступно ли оно чувству жалости?...
— Оно доступно только доводам разума, сэр ... и больше ничему.
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