“Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”

“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. And that Death which was present in this dear brother (who, waking up, moaned and by habit called indiscriminately on God and on the devil) was not so far away as it hitherto seemed to be. It was within himself to- he felt it. If not today, then tomorrow or thirty years hence, was it not all the same? But what that inevitable Death was, he not only did not know, not only had never considered, but could not and dared not consider.”

“[Pierre] involuntarily started comparing these two men, so different and at the same time so similar, because of the love he had for both of them, and because both had lived and both had died.”

“Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.”

“Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.”

“Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.”

“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before...”

“I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me”

“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy”

“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”

“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”

“It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.”

“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"

“Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.”

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”