“It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals...”

“In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special of his own. The difference between his former and present self was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.”

“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.”

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

“Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.”

“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”

“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.”

“Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you’re old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.”

“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him”

“In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.”