Yozhov's words bubbled on like boiling water, and heated his soul.
"I will say to them, to those miserable idlers: 'Look! Life goes onward, leaving you behind!'" "Eh! That's fine!" exclaimed Foma, ecstatically, and began to move about on the lounge.

"You're a hero, Nikolay! Oh! Go ahead! Throw it right into their faces!" But Yozhov was not in need of encouragement, it seemed even as though he had not heard at all Foma's exclamations, and he went on: "I know the limitations of my powers.

I know they'll shout at me: 'Hold your peace!' They'll tell me: 'Keep silence!' They will say it wisely, they will say it calmly, mocking me, they will say it from the height of their majesty.

I know I am only a small bird, Oh, I am not a nightingale! Compared with them I am an ignorant man, I am only a feuilleton-writer, a man to amuse the public.

Let them cry and silence me, let them do it! A blow will fall on my cheek, but the heart will nevertheless keep on throbbing! And I will say to them: "'Yes, I am an ignorant man! And my first advantage over you is that I do not know a single book-truth dearer to me than a man! Man is the universe, and may he live forever who carries the whole world within him! And you,'I will say, 'for the sake of a word which, perhaps, does not always contain a meaning comprehensible to you, for the sake of a word you often inflict sores and wounds on one another, for the sake of a word you spurt one another with bile, you assault the soul.