“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often, they are not immediately”

“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.”

“It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.”

“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

“At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so differently.”

“God gave the day, God gave the strength.”

“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”

“A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure.”

“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

“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.”

“It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.”

“At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.”

“Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing what others have not seen.”

“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”

“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.