“You’re a milksop, I see!” Bulba said. “Don’t listen to your mother, my boy. She’s a woman, she knows nothing! What do you need sweetness for? An open field and a good horse, that’s all the sweetness that you need. You see this saber. This saber is your mother! They’ve been filling your heads with filth, that’s what they’ve been doing! The Seminary, and all those books and primers and philosophy and the devil knows what else- I spit on it all!” And Bulba slipped in a word that cannot appear in print.”
Nikolai Gogol, “Tarus Bulba”, 1835.
Set the Bar 