“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”

“nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.

“In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.”

“There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those about him.”

“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?”

“No hay felicidad en la existencia, no hay más que relámpagos de felicidad.”

“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.”

“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”

“There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important.”

“War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. Our attitude towards the fearful necessity of war ought to be stern. It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war and not a game. Otherwise, war is a favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous...”

“either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it...”

“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”

“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force.

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.”