* * * * *

Koulyguin:  “I am a jolly fellow, I infect every one with my mood.”

* * * * *

Koul.  Gives lessons at rich houses.

* * * * *

Koul.  In Act IV without mustaches.

* * * * *

The wife implores the husband:  “Don’t get fat.”

* * * * *

O if there were a life in which every one grew younger and more beautiful.

* * * * *

Irene:  “It is hard to live without a father, without a mother.”—­“And without a husband.”—­“Yes, without a husband.  Whom could one confide in?  To whom could one complain?  With whom could one share ones’s joy?  One must love some one strongly.”

* * * * *

Koulyguin (to his wife):  “I am so happy to be married to you, that I consider it ungentlemanly and improper to speak of or even mention a dowry.  Hush, don’t say anything....”

* * * * *

The doctor enjoys being at the duel.

* * * * *

It is difficult to live without orderlies.  You cannot make the servants answer your bell.

* * * * *

The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th companies left at 4, and we leave at 12 sharp.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Here the fragments from the rough draft of Three Sisters end.]

* * * * *

In the daytime conversations about the loose manners of the girls in secondary schools, in the evening a lecture on degeneration and the decline of everything, and at night, after all this, one longs to shoot oneself.

* * * * *

In the life of our towns there is no pessimism, no Marxism, and no movements, but there is stagnation, stupidity, mediocrity.

* * * * *

He had a thirst for life, but it seemed to him to mean that he wanted a drink—­and he drank wine.

* * * * *

F. in the town-hall:  Serguey Nik. in a plaintive voice:  “Gentlemen, where can we get the means?  Our town is poor.”

* * * * *

To be idle involuntarily means to listen to what is being said, to see what is being done; but he who works and is occupied hears little and sees little.

* * * * *

In the skating rink he raced after L.; he wanted to overtake her and it seemed as if it were life which he wanted to overtake, that life which one cannot bring back or overtake or catch, just as one cannot catch one’s shadow.

* * * * *

Only one thought reconciled him to the doctor:  just as he had suffered from the doctor’s ignorance, so perhaps some one was suffering from his mistakes.