It's a pity that the time required--ten evenings--is impossible to arrange for, or we might hear a great deal that's interesting." "Can you be in earnest ?" Madame Virginsky addressed the lame gentleman with a shade of positive uneasiness in her voice, "when that man doesn't know what to do with people and so turns nine-tenths of them into slaves?
I've suspected him for a long time." "You say that of your own brother ?" asked the lame man.
"Relationship?
Are you laughing at me ?" "And besides, to work for aristocrats and to obey them as though they were gods is contemptible!" observed the girl-student fiercely.
"What I propose is not contemptible; it's paradise, an earthly paradise, and there can be no other on earth," Shigalov pronounced authoritatively.
"For my part," said Lyamshin, "if I didn't know what to do with nine-tenths of mankind, I'd take them and blow them up into the air instead of putting them in paradise.

I'd only leave a handful of educated people, who would live happily ever afterwards on scientific principles." "No one but a buffoon can talk like that!" cried the girl, flaring up.
"He is a buffoon, but he is of use," Madame Virginsky whispered to her.
"And possibly that would be the best solution of the problem," said Shigalov, turning hotly to Lyamshin.

"You certainly don't know what a profound thing you've succeeded in saying, my merry friend.

But as it's hardly possible to carry out your idea, we must confine ourselves to an earthly paradise, since that's what they call it." "This is pretty thorough rot," broke, as though involuntarily, from Verhovensky.

Without even raising his eyes, however, he went on cutting his nails with perfect nonchalance.
"Why is it rot ?" The lame man took it up instantly, as though he had been lying in wait for his first words to catch at them.