When they sang in church, "Now is the beginning of our salvation," he ate glavizna at home; on the day of St. John the Baptist he ate no food that was circular and flogged his children.[1]

[Footnote 1: Glavizna in Russian is the name of a fish and also means beginning; the root of the verbs "to behead" and "to flog" are the same.]

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A journalist wrote lies in the newspaper, but he thought he was writing the truth.

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If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

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He himself is rich, but his mother is in the workhouse.

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He married, furnished a house, bought a writing-table, got everything in order, but found he had nothing to write.