Oblomov Quotes

“When you don't know what you're living for, you don't care how you live from one day to the next. You're happy the day has passed and the night has come, and in your sleep you bury the tedious question of what you lived for that day and what you're going to live for tomorrow.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Love was life's hardest school of all.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Memories are either the greatest poetry, when they are memories of a vital happiness, or a burning pain, when they touch dried wounds.

p. 479”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Although people call love a capricious and unaccountable emotion that arises like an illness, nonetheless it has its own laws and reasons, like everything else. If these laws have been little studied so far, that is because a person struck down by love is in no condition to observe with a scholar's eye as the impression steals into his soul and shackles his emotions like a dream, as first his eyes go blind, at which moment his pulse and then his heart begin beating harder, all of a sudden there arises as of yesterday an undying devotion, the desire to sacrifice oneself; one's I gradually vanishes and crosses over into him or her; the mind becomes wither unusually dull or unusually sharp; the will surrenders to the will of another; and the head bows, the knees shake and the tears and fever come.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“When all the forces in your organism come into play, then life will begin to play around you as well. You'll see what your eyes are closed to now, and you'll hear what you've never heard. The music of your nerves will begin to play, you'll hear the music of the spheres, and you'll listen to the grass grow. Just wait, there's no hurry. It will come in its own time!

p. 257”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Yes, and I think I will have enough strength to live and love my whole life through. One without the other is impossible.

p. 265”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Ah! This is retribution for Promethean fire! Besides being patient, you must also love this sadness and respect your doubts and questions. They are an abundant excess, a luxury of life, and they appear more at the summits of happiness, when you have no crude desires. They are not born in the midst of mundanity. They have no place where there is grief and want. The masses go along without knowing the fog of doubts or the anguish of questions. But for anyone who has encountered them at the right time they are dear visitors, not a hammer.'

'But there's no coping with them. They bring anguish and indifference to nearly everything.' she added indecisively.

'But for how long? Afterward they refresh life,' he said. 'They lead to an abyss from which nothing can be gained, and they force you to look again at life, with even greater love. They summon up your tested powers to struggle with it, as if expressly to let them sleep afterward.'

'This fog and these specters torment me!' she complained. 'Everything is bright and all of a sudden a sinister shadow is cast over life! Are there no means against this?'

'What do you mean? Your buttress is in life! Without it, life is sickening, even without any questions!'

p. 508”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“She attended the French performance, but the play's content now had a connection to her life. She read a book and the book invariably had lines with sparks from her mind, the fire of her emotions flickered here and there, and words spoken the night before were written down, as if the author had overheard how her heart beat.

The forest held the same trees, but their sound had taken on special meaning; she had established a vibrant consonance with them. The birds did not simply twitter and chirp but were saying something to each other. Everything around her spoke and responded to her mood; a flower would blossom and she seemed to hear its breathing.

pp. 256-257”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Life is duty and obligation, therefore love, too, is a duty. It's as if God sent it to me,' she said, looking up at the sky, 'and told me to love.'

p. 265”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Sosyeteymiş, toplummuş! Sen, herhalde kasten götürüyorsun beni bu sosyete ve toplumlara, orada olma isteğinden tümden kurtulmam için. Yaşam, ah güzel yaşam! Onu nerede aramalı? Aklın, kalbin ilgilerinde mi? Bütün bunların çevresinde döndüğü merkezi göster: öyle bir şey yok, derin bir şey, canlı bir şey yok. Bütün bunlar ölü, uyuyan insanlar, benden de kötü bu sosyete ve toplum üyeleri! Onları yaşamda sürükleyen şey ne? Bunlar yatmayıp her gün sinekler gibi, ileri geri uçuşuyorlar, ama ne için? Bir salona giriyorsun ve misafirlerin nasıl simetrik bir şekilde yerleştiğine, nasıl huzurlu ve derin düşüncelere dalmış bir şekilde kâğıt oynamaya oturduğuna şaşakalıyorsun. Diyecek bir şey yok, şanlı bir yaşam vazifesi! Hareket arayan bir akıl için mükemmel örnek! Bunlar ölü değil mi? Yaşamları boyunca oturup pineklemiyorlar mı? Neden ben evde yattığım ve aklımı valelerle, sineklerle bozmadığım için daha suçlu oluyormuşum?” “Yaşlı onların hepsi, bunu bin kez konuştuk,” dedi Ştoltz. “Daha yeni bir şeyin yok mu?” “Peki bizim iyi gençlerimiz, onlar ne yapıyor? Herhalde uyumuyor, Neva Bulvarı’nda geziniyor, dans ediyorlar? Her gün boş yere üst üste yığılan günler! Ama baksana, onlar gibi giyinmeyen, onların unvan ve adını taşımayanlara nasıl kibirle ve tarifsiz bir özgüvenle, küçümseyici bakışlarla bakıyorlar. Ve zavallılar kendilerinin kalabalıktan yüksekte olduğunu hayal ediyor: ‘Bizler, bizden başka kimsenin çalışmadığı yerlerde çalışırız; biz koltukların en ön sırasındayız, Knez N.’nin balosundayız, sadece bizi davet ettiler bu baloya’... Ama bir araya toplanınca da vahşiler gibi içip kavga ederler! Bunlar mı canlı, uyumayan insanlar? Hem sadece gençler de değil: yetişkinlere de bak. Bir araya geliyor, birbirlerini davet ediyorlar, ne büyük konukseverlik, ne iyilik, ne birbirlerine düşkünlük! Öğle yemeğinde, akşam yemeğinde görev gibi toplanıyorlar, neşesiz, soğuk bir halde, aşçılarıyla, salonlarıyla övünmek ve sonra da bıyık altından gülmek, birbirlerine çelme takmak için. Evvelsi gün, yemekten sonra orada bulunmayan ünlüleri karalamaya başladıkları zaman nereye bakacağımı bilemedim, masanın altına saklanmak istedim: ‘O aptal, bu rezil, diğeri hırsız, ötekisi komik’; sanki avlanıyorlar! Bunu söylerken bir de birbirlerine şöyle der gibi bakıyorlar: ‘Haydi çık sen dışarı, sıra sana da gelecek...’ Eğer bunlar öyleyse neden onlarla yan yana geliyorlar? Neden birbirlerinin elini böyle sertçe sıkıyorlar? Ne samimi bir gülüş, ne bir duygudaşlık ışıltısı! Gösterişli unvanlar, rütbeler almaya çabalıyorlar. ‘Benim şuyum var, ben bu oldum,’ diye böbürleniyorlar... Bu mu yaşamak? Ben bunu istemem. Ne öğreneceğim orada, ne alacağım?”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and legs, engravings that were sometimes bad but precious in memory, and bric-a-brac. Only the eye of a connoisseur would have blazed with eagerness at the sight of this painting or that, some book yellowed with age, a piece of old porcelain, or stones and coins.

But the furniture and paintings of different ages, the bric-a-brac that meant nothing to anyone but had been marked for them both by a happy hour or memorable moment, and the ocean of books and sheet music breathed a warm life that oddly stimulated the mind and aesthetic sense. Present everywhere was vigilant thought. The beauty of human effort shone here, just as the eternal beauty of nature shone all around.

pp. 492-493”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Because he possesses something that is worth more than any amount of intelligence - an honest and faithful heart! It is the matchless treasure that he has carried through his life unharmed. People knocked him down, he grew indifferent and, at last, dropped asleep, crushed, disappointed, having lost the strength to live; but he has not lost his honesty and faithfulness. His heart has never struck a single false note; there is no stain on his character. No well-dressed-up lie has ever deceived him and nothing will lure him from the true path. A regular ocean of evil and baseless may be surging around him, the entire world may be poisoned and turned upside down - Oblomov will never bow down to the idol of falsehood, and his soul will always be pure, noble, honest ... His soul is translucent, clear as crystal. Such people are rare; there aren't many of them; they are like pearls in a crowd! His heart cannot be bribed; he can be relied on always and anywhere. It is to this you have remained faithful, and that is why nothing I do for him will ever be a burden to me. I have known lots of people possessing high qualities, but never have I met a heart more pure, more noble, and more simple. I have loved many people, but no one so warmly and so firmly as Oblomov. Once you know him, you cannot stop loving him. Isn't that so? Am I right?”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“But in love, merit is won blindly and unaccountably, and in this blindness and unaccountability lies happiness.

pp. 445-446”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“He had never clearly fathomed the true weight of a word of good, truth, and purity cast in the stream of human speech and the deep bend it cut in it. Nor had he thought that a word spoken boldly and loudly, with no hint of false shame, but rather with courage, that this word would not drown in the ugly cries of fashionable satyrs but would plunge like a pearl into the abyss of public life and always find itself a shell.

Many stumble over a good word, blushing in embarrassment, and utter a careless word boldly and loudly, never suspecting that it, too, unfortunately, will not go for naught but will leave a long trail of often times ineradicable evil.

p. 296”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“The moments of nature's universal, triumphant silence had come, those minutes when the creative mind works harder, poetic thoughts seethe more ardently, the heart's passion blazes more brightly and its longing aches more painfully, the grain of criminal thought ripens in a cruel soul more imperturbably and powerfully.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“You have a lunatic before you who has been infected by passion.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“My life began by flickering out. It may sound strange but it is so. From the very first moment I became conscious of myself, I felt that I was already flickering out. I began to flicker out over the writing of official papers at the office; I went on flickering out when I read truths in books which I did not know how to apply in life, when I sat with friends listening to rumours, gossip, jeering, spiteful, cold, and empty chatter, and watching friendships kept up by meetings that were without aim or affection; I was flickering out and wasting my energies with Minna on whom I spent more than half of my income, imagining that I loved her; I was flickering out when I walked idly and dejectedly along Nevsky Avenue among people in raccoon coats and beaver collars – at parties, on reception days, where I was welcomed with open arms as a fairly eligible young man; I was flickering out and wasting my life and mind on trifles moving from town to some country house, and from the country house to Gorokhovaya, fixing the arrival of spring by the fact that lobsters and oysters had appeared in the shops, of autumn and winter by the special visiting days, of summer by the fêtes, and life in general by lazy and comfortable somnolence like the rest. ... Even ambition – what was it wasted on? To order clothes at a famous tailor's? To get an invitation to a famous house? To shake hands with Prince P.? And ambition is the salt of life! Where has it gone to? Either I have not understood this sort of life or it is utterly worthless; but I did not know of a better one. No one showed it to me.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“When you don’t know what you’re living for, you don’t care how you live from one day to the next. You’re happy the day has passed and the night has come, and in your sleep you bury the tedious question of what you lived for that day and what you’re going to live for tomorrow.”
― Ivan Goncharov

“As a young man, he had instinctively husbanded the freshness of his powers. At the time, it was too soon to see that this freshness was giving birth to vivacity and gaiety, and shape to the courage needed to forge a soul that does not pale, no matter what life brings, regards life not as a heavy burden, a cross, but merely as a duty, and does battle with it with dignity.

He had devoted much mental care to his heart and its wise laws. Observing the reflection of beauty on the imagination, both consciously and unconsciously, then the transition from impression to emotion, its symptoms, play, and outcome and looking around himself, advancing into life, he derived for himself the conviction that love moves the world like Archimede's lever, that it holds as much universal and irrefutable truth and good as misunderstanding and misuse do hypocrisy and ugliness.

p. 494”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Having done with the cares of business, Oblomov liked to withdraw into himself and live in the world of his own creation. He was not unacquainted with the joys of lofty thoughts; he was not unfamiliar with human sorrows. Sometimes he wept bitterly in his heart of hearts over the calamities of mankind and experienced secret and nameless sufferings and anguish and a yearning for something far away, for the world, perhaps, where Stolz used to carry him away. ... Sweet tears flowed from his eyes.

It would also happen that sometimes he would be filled with contempt for human vice, lies, and slanders, for the evil that was rife in the world, and he was consumed by a desire to point out to man his sores, and suddenly thoughts were kindled in him, sweeping through his head like waves of the sea, growing into intentions, setting his blood on fire, flexing his muscles, and swelling his veins; then his intentions turned to strivings; moved by a spiritual force, he would change his position two or three times in one minute, and half-rising on his couch with blazing eyes, stretch forth his hand and look around him like one inspired. ... In another moment the striving would turn into a heroic act – and then, heavens! What wonders, what beneficent results might one not expect from such a lofty effort!

But the morning passed, the day was drawing to its close, and with it Oblomov's exhausted energies were crying out for a rest: the storms and emotions died down, his head recovered from the spell of his reverie, and his blood flowed more slowly in his veins. Oblomov turned on his back quietly and wistfully and, fixing a sorrowful gaze at the window and the sky, mournfully watched the sun setting gorgeously behind a four-storied house. How many times had he watched the sun set like that!”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Now or never! To be or not to be!" Oblomov raised himself from his chair a little, but failing to find his slippers with his feet at once, sat down again.”
― Ivan Goncharov

“Ah! Dat is de tol van het vuur van Prometheus! Die treurigheid moet je niet alleen verdragen, maar zelfs liefhebben, je moet respect krijgen voor je twijfels en vragen: die zijn een luxe, een bewijs van overvloed en ze verschijnen vooral op momenten van volmaakt geluk, wanneer er geen grote wensen meer zijn; die onstaan niet in het alledaagse leven: waar zorg en nood heersen, is voor hen geen plaats; de meeste mensen lopen voort en kennen deze mist van twijfel, die melancholie van vragen niet... Maar wie er ooit mee kennis heeft gemaakt, die weet dat ze geen last zijn, maar dierbare gasten.”
― gontsjarov

“Zoals er in zijn organisme niets overbodigs was, zo streefde hij ook in zijn geestelijk leven naar een evenwicht tussen de praktische kanten en de meer verfijnde geestelijke behoeften. Die twee kanten liepen parallel, kruisten elkaar soms onderweg en raakten vervlochten, maar nooit tot een onontwarbare knoop.”
― gontsjarov

“Wat is dan jouw levensideaal? Wat is dan geen Oblomovisme? Streeft dan niet iedereen hetzelfde na als ik? Neem me niet kwalijk! Maar is het doel van al jullie drukte, hartstochten, oorlogen, handel en politiek dan niet het zoeken van rust, het vinden van het verloren paradijs?”
― gontsjarov

“De tijd van symbolische toespelingen, veelbetekenende glimlachjes, seringetakjes was onherroepelijk voorbij. De liefde was strenger, veeleisender geworden, bijna een plicht; er kwamen wederzijdse rechten. Beide zijden profileerden zich meer en meer: misverstanden en twijfels verdwenen of maakten plaats voor concreter en positiever problemen.”
― gontsjarov

“Ach, hou op! De mens is geschapen om zichzelf te bouwen en zelfs om zijn eigen aard te veranderen, maar jij hebt een buikje gekregen en denkt nu dat de natuur je deze last heeft gezonden! Je had vleugels, maar je hebt ze afgelegd.”
― gontsjarov

“Het geluk stroomt over de rand, zozeer wil ik leven...en dan krijg je ineens last van die droefheid...'
'Ah! Dat is de tol voor het vuur van Prometheus! Die treurigheid moet je niet alleen verdragen, maar zelfs liefhebben, je moet respect krijgen voor je twijfels en vragen: die zijn een luxe, een bewijs van overvloed en ze verschijnen vooral op momenten van volmaakt geluk, wanneer er geen grote wensen meer zijn; die ontstaan niet in het alledaagse leven: waar zorg en nood heersen, is voor hen geen plaats; de meeste mensen lopen voort en kennen deze mist van twijfel, die melancholie van vragen niet... Maar wie er ooit mee kennis heeft gemaakt, die weet dat ze geen last zijn, maar dierbare gasten.”
― gontsjarov

“Kujtimet janë një poezi e madhe kur janë kujtime të një lumturie të gjallë, por bëhen mall që të zhurit kur të kapin plagët e fjetura...”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov: A Classic Russian Satirical Novel

“Afrimi i ngushtë midis dy njerëzve, rëndon kurdoherë mbi të dy palët dhe duhet një përvojë e pasur jete, shumë logjikë e përzemërsi që, duke përfituar vetëm nga cilësitë pozitive të njëri-tjetrit, të mos e fyesh shokun me të metat e tua dhe mos ndjesh vehten te fyer nga të metat e tij.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“Më duket sikur brenda kam të burgosur një dritë që kërkon më kot një shteg të dalë, dhe më duket se do të djegë ndriçimin e saj për të ndriçuar burgun ku është mbyllur.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov