Home of the Gentry

Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth!

To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what's is so painful you can't sense your powers leaving you. It's hard for an old man to ensure such blows!

Victims of misfortune are quick to sense another of their kind from a distance, but in old age they rarely become friends, which is in no way surprising: they have nothing to share together - not even hope.

Traces of human life vanish very quickly: Glafira Petrovna's estate had not yet gone wild, but it seemed already to have sunk into that quiet repose which possesses everything on earth wherever there is no restless human infection to affect it.