ignoble,

he reread, or read for the first time, Plato, and Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer – the philosophers who gave a non-materialistic explanation of life.6 Their

‘I think,’ said Konstantin, ‘that no activity can be solid unless it’s based on personal interest. That is a general truth, a philosophical one,’ he said, resolutely repeating the word ‘philosophical’, as if wishing to show that he, too, had the right, like anyone else, to speak of philosophy.

to understand one and the same thing with certainty and to compose that life of the soul which alone makes life worth living and alone is what we value.

loquacity

What did it mean? It meant that his life was good, but his thinking was bad.

But it is hard for a discontented man not to reproach someone else, especially the very one who is closest to him, for his discontent.

dialectics,

‘I’m amazed at the clairvoyance of people in love,’ she added with a smile and so that he alone could hear: ‘She wasn’t there. But drop in after the opera.’