Quotes from Karolina Pavlova

That prisoner of society's world, That sacrifice to vanity, The blind slave of custom, That small-souled being isn't you.

Do you really not know that to praise a woman's mind is to abuse her? Is everyone not convinced that where there's cleverness there's no heart? Has it not been decided that a clever woman is a sort of monster who can feel nothing? Ask anyone, they'll all tell you so.

To you the offering of this thought, The greeting of my poetry, To you this work of solitude, O slaves of din and vanity. In silence did my sad sigh name You Cecily's unmet by me, All of you Psyches without wings, Mute sisters of my soul! God grant you, unknown family, One sacred dream mid sinful lies, In the prison of this narrow life Just one brief burst of that other life.

Zealously she paid her debt to virtue and morality—all the more so because she had set about this a little late without ever thinking for the better half of her life that there would be such a price, but then, becoming convinced that it was unavoidable, she—one must do her justice—endeavored with an improbable commitment to pay the aforementioned debt and all interest that had accrued.

Society, with all its strictness is sometimes kind-hearted: depending on the circumstances, it looks with such Christian forgiveness upon powerful people, upon prominent and wealthy women! And besides, in the aristocratic educated world, everything is angled so smoothly, the sharp edges so blunted, and each monstrous and rotten affair called by such decent language that every shameful thing is glossed over in such fine circumstances, effortlessly and quietly.

Vera Vladimirovna was, as we have seen, very proud of her daughter's successful upbringing, especially perhaps because it had been accomplished not without difficulty, because it took time and skill to destroy in her soul its innate thirst for delight and enthusiasm.

They flicked the reins and were carried far ahead of the men, with that violent female daring which is so far from manly valor.

Society women have achieved the wondrous art of contriving thirty variations on a phrase that means nothing even the first time

He was one of those people who in all of their feelings and actions seem to be walking along a steep, downhill slope. They lack the strength to stop for a minute, and with each step, they get more and more carried away. Like all of them, Dmitry took this insufficiency of strength for fervency of character and insuperable storminess of passion.

This state of lively tension, the jolly noise that surrounds brides, call to mind that accidentally deafening music and beating of drums by which soldiers are led into mortal combat.