Only when speaking of himself he talked in a rather peculiar voice, and the more impassioned he was in speaking of himself, the more merciless and enraged was he in reviling everything and everybody.

And his relation toward Foma was dual; sometimes he gave him courage and spoke to him hotly, quivering in every limb.
"Go ahead! Refute and overthrow everything you can! Push forward with all your might.

There is nothing more valuable than man, know this! Cry at the top of your voice: 'Freedom! Freedom!" But when Foma, warmed up by the glowing sparks of these words, began to dream of how he should start to refute and overthrow people who, for the sake of personal profit, do not want to broaden life, Yozhov would often cut him short: "Drop it! You cannot do anything! People like you are not needed.

Your time, the time of the strong but not clever, is past, my dear! You are too late! There is no place for you in life." "No?
You are lying!" cried Foma, irritated by contradiction.
"Well, what can you accomplish ?" "I ?" "You!" "Why, I can kill you!" said Foma, angrily, clenching his fist.
"Eh, you scarecrow!" said Yozhov, convincingly and pitifully, with a shrug of the shoulder.

"Is there anything in that?
Why, I am anyway half dead already from my wounds." And suddenly inflamed with melancholy malice, he stretched himself and said: "My fate has wronged me.