Fragment 509

There are an awful lot of people nowadays who, out of habit, still consider themselves the younger generation, because yesterday they still were, and they don’t notice that they’re already on the way out….

The Adolescent

Dostoevsky met Goncharov in the street – two late middle-aged writers meet and bemoan the state of the world- and asked him whether all the phenomena of the present time were comprehensible to him.

Goncharov replied, that they were not, moreover that he did not even desire to grasp them. “My ideals” he added, “and all that I have prized in life, are far too dear to me, and for the few years that I have yet to live, I mean to abide by them. It would go too hard with me to study these people,” he gestured to the passers-by flowing past them, “for I should be obliged to use up in so doing the time which is so precious to me…”