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THE man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Overaas.

Tchervyakov was embarrassed, he smiled stupidly and fell to gazing at the stage.

I am writing a history of the things men do. I have written three such histories and I am but a young man. Already I have written three hundred, four hundred thousand words.

It was in the second decade of the Twentieth Century, after the Great Plague had devastated England, that Hermann the Irascible, nicknamed also the Wise, sat on the British throne.

Also known as The Story of the Aged Mother, this Japanese folktale tells the story of an unkind ruler who issues cruel orders, including one demand that all old folks are to be abandoned and left to die. Basho tells a poignant story about a mother and her son and their love for one another.

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.

In the east, the full moon was rising in all her beauty, making pale the stars that were sparking in the firmament.

Two friends -- one a fat man and the other a thin man -- met at the Nikolaevsky station.

In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.