Sanine drank, smoked, and said nothing. He looked thoroughly bored, and
when amid the general clamour some of the voices became unduly violent,
he got up, and extinguishing his cigarette, said:
"I say, do you know, this is getting uncommonly boring!"
"Yes, indeed!" cried Dubova.
"Sheer vanity and vexation of spirit!" said Ivanoff, who had been
waiting for a fitting moment to drag in this favourite phrase of his.
"In what way?" asked the Polytechnic student, angrily.
Sanine took no notice of him, but, turning to Yourii, said:
"Do you really believe that you can get a conception of life from any
book?"
"Most certainly I do," replied Yourii, in a tone of surprise.
"Then you are wrong," said Sanine. "If this were really so, one could
mould the whole of humanity according to one type by giving people
works to read of one tendency. A conception of life is only obtained
from life itself, in its entirety, of which literature and human
thought are but an infinitesimal part. No theory of life can help one
to such a conception, for this depends upon the mood or frame of mind
of each individual, which is consequently apt to vary so long as man
lives.
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