If I had not head the sounds from next door, and had not had the realities of our dinner before me, I should have thought I was dreaming." "What has put you out so, my dear Paul ?" said Wilhelm.
"What! Are you men of flesh and blood?
Are you really alive?
There we sat for four mortal hours, and the talk was wearisome to a degree, never one sensible word." "Now! now!" protested Schrotter.
"Herr Doctor, forgive me, but I must repeat it, never one sensible word.

Do you call Dorfling's 'Philosophy of Deliverance' sensible?
or, Wilhelm, your philosophy of self-culture, which, with all deference to you, I call philosophical onanism?
Only six men, two of them under thirty-five, and the whole blessed evening not one word about either pleasure or love." They had come to the place where Friedrichstrasse and Leipzigerstrasse cross each other; and Schrotter signed to them to look toward the left corner.

There under a gas lamp they saw Barinskoi in earnest conversation with a woman.
"Yes, look at him! That brute is still the most reasonable among all your philosophics.

He has his method of sponging, and enjoys himself according to the category of Aristotle.

But your metaphysics--" "What do you really want, Paul ?" "Well, I want you all to have to do for once with practical life, with two hundred workmen to pay and ten thousand acres of land to see after; and artificial manures and the price of corn to worry you; then perhaps you would take a little less interest as to whether the soul was a phenomenon or an india-rubber ball, or whether men were magnets or cogwheels." Wilhelm only smiled.