You're not racing?" joked the officer.

"Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully.

And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.

“the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so s…”

“We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject h…”

“wisdom needs no violence...As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile!…”

“To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire p…”