“On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.”

“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.”

“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...”

“I have lived through much and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet, secluded life in the country with possibility of being useful to people.”

“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”

“He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly”

“[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.”

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

“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.”

“If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you.”

“He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.”

“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”

“But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.”

“A thought can advance your life in the right direction only when it answers questions which were asked by your soul. A thought which was first borrowed from someone else and then accepted by your mind and memory does not really much influence your life, and sometimes leads you in the wrong direction. Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.”

“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”