And no one cares to see that convictions are to them but the clothes with which they cover the beggarly nakedness of their souls.
On the narrow brows of such people there always shines the inscription so familiar to all: calmness and confidence.

What a false inscription! Just rub their foreheads with firm hand and then you will see the real sign-board, which reads: 'Narrow mindedness and weakness of soul!'" Foma watched Yozhov bustling about the room, and thought mournfully: "Whom is he abusing?
I can't understand; but I can see that he has been terribly wounded." "How many such people have I seen!" exclaimed Yozhov, with wrath and terror.

"How these little retail shops have multiplied in life! In them you will find calico for shrouds, and tar, candy and borax for the extermination of cockroaches, but you will not find anything fresh, hot, wholesome! You come to them with an aching soul exhausted by loneliness; you come, thirsting to hear something that has life in it.

And they offer to you some worm cud, ruminated book-thoughts, grown sour with age.

And these dry, stale thoughts are always so poor that, in order to give them expression, it is necessary to use a vast number of high-sounding and empty words.