"Yes, but they are peasants and that is entirely different."
"It is the same thing, merely with this addition; that for them your famous and great men do not exist at all and it doesn't make the slightest difference to them whether Newton or Shakespeare ever lived or not. And they are just as well off with their ignorance, just as well."
Janina became silent, for what he had said appeared to her paradoxical and not very true.
"What will I learn from your newspapers and your theaters? Merely that people love, hate, and fight one another the same as ever; that evil and brute force continue to reign as they always have done; that the world and life are merely a big mill in which brains and consciences are ground to dust. It is more comfortable to know nothing rather than that," he continued.
"But is it right for anyone to seclude himself so egoistically from all that is going on in the world?" asked Janina.
"Precisely in that lies wisdom. To desire nothing for ourselves, care for nothing, and be indifferent that is what we ought to aim at."
"Is it possible to attain such a state of complete apathy?"
"It is attained through the experience of life and through thinking. Remember that the smallest pleasure, a mere momentary satisfaction, always costs us more dearly than it is really worth. The average man will not, for instance, pay a thousand rubles for a pear, for he knows that would be an insane absurdity, and moreover, he knows the relative value of a thousand rubles and of a pear. But out of the capital of his life he is ready to squander thousands for mere trifles—for a light love affair that lasts only as long as it takes a two cent pear to ripen, for he has never considered the almost priceless value of his own vital energy and becomes blind to all, like a bull when the toreador flashes a red rag before his eyes, and pays for that blindness with a part of his life. The majority of human beings die, not from natural necessity, like a lamp when its oil has burned out, but from bankruptcy, from squandering their powers and strength on foolish things that are worth a thousand times less than one day of life."
"I would not want to live such a cold and calculated life without frenzies, dreams, and love."
"The world would not come to an end, if people did not love."