Dead Souls

be­gin­ning, and not the middle, is the right start­ing point.

who is born with thou­sands, and is brought up to thou­sands, will never ac­quire a single ko­peck more, for he will have been set up with the amen­it­ies of life in ad­vance, and so never come to stand in need of any­thing. It is ne­ces­sary to be­gin from the be­gin­ning rather than from the middle; from a ko­peck rather than from a rouble; from the bot­tom rather than from the top. For only thus will a man get to know the men and con­di­tions among which his ca­reer will have to be carved.

On the con­trary, to make thou­sands hon­estly is a far more dif­fi­cult mat­ter than to make mil­lions. Mil­lions are eas­ily come by, for a mil­lion­aire has no need to re­sort to crooked ways; the way lies straight be­fore him, and he needs but to an­nex what­so­ever he comes across. No rival will spring up to op­pose him, for no rival will be suf­fi­ciently strong, and since the mil­lion­aire can op­er­ate over an ex­tens­ive ra­dius, he can bring (as I have said) two or three roubles to bear upon any­one else’s one. Con­sequently, what in­terest will he de­rive from a thou­sand roubles? Why, ten or twenty per­cent. at the least.”
“And it is bey­ond meas­ure mar­vel­lous that the whole should have star­ted from a single ko­peck.”