“But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.”

“He felt that now over his every word, his every deed, there was a judge, a judgment, which was dearer to him than the judgments of all the people in the world. He spoke now, and along with his words he considered the impression his words would make on Natasha. He did not deliberately say what would be please her, but whatever he said, he judged himself from her point of view.”

“The combination of causes of phenomena is beyond the grasp of the human intellect. But the impulse to seek causes is innate in the soul of man. And the human intellect, with no inkling of the immense variety and complexity of circumstances conditioning a phenomenon, any one of which may be separately conceived of as the cause of it, snatches at the first and most easily understood approximation, and says here is the cause.”

“I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth.

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

“I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious – your heart, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings,But the more difficult the labour and hardship, the higher the reward,”

“A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.”

“We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of my life.

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Everything that I Know, I Know Only Because I Love...”

“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”

“When Mother smiled, no matter how nice her face had been before, it became incomparably nicer and everything around seemed to brighten up as well.”