“What is to be done? There was no solution, but the universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. The answer is: one must live in the needs of the day -- that is, forget oneself.”

“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.”

“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”

“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...”

“He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.”

“No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.”

“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.”

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”

“As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.”

“My field was God’s earth. Wherever I ploughed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a thing no man called his own. Labor was the only thing men called their own.”

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”

“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?”