“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”

“what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?”

“Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance. ”

“There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And Itry licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

“in infinite space and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex, is differentiated",is to say nothing at all. Those are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite is neither complex nor simple, no forward nor backward, or better or worse.”

“I must ask what it is you want of me?" "What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.”

“- Every girl is proud of an offer, Yes, every girl, but not she”

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

“No one is satisfied with his fortune,and everyone is satisfied with his wit.”

“Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only an atmosphere.”

“It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused.”

“The Kingdom of God is Within You,”

“He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.”

“My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.”

“If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.”