The Overcoat and Other Short Stories

Around the windows and above the doors were a multitude of small pictures, which you grow accustomed to regard as spots on the wall, and which you never look at.

- How dare you, I repeat, In disregard of all decency, call me a goose? - I spit on your head, Ivan Ivanovich! What are you screaming so for?

At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice, that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first of all to do so, had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while it was going on.

Godine 2000, aprila 43.; Martobra 86. Između dana i noći; Datum nikoji Dan je bio bez datuma; Datuma se ne sećam. Meseca takođe nije bilo. Bilo je vrag bi ga znao šta.; Datum 1.; Madrid Februarij trideseti; Januar iste te godine, koji je nastupio posle februara; 25. datum; Datum 34 godine Februar 349.

How dared you, I repeat, in disregard of all decency, call me a goose?

in accordance with the primitive arrangement of things, the most trifling causes produce the greatest events, and the grandest undertakings end in the most insignificant results.

And Petersburg was left without Akakii Akakievich, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared, and was hidden, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, who never even attracted to himself the attention of an observer of nature, who omits no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope...

All this has for me an indescribable charm, perhaps because I no longer see it, and because anything from which we are separated is pleasing to us.

Be quiet, Afanasii Ivanovich,” said Pulcheria Ivanovna: “you just like to talk, and that’s all. A dog is not clean; a dog soils things, and breaks everything: but the cat is a peaceable beast; she does no harm to any one.

Pulcheria Ivanovna reached out her hand to stroke her; but the ungrateful animal had evidently become too well used to robber cats, or adopted some romantic notion about love and poverty being better than a palace, for the cats were as poor as church-mice.