“Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me”

“The best way to become a person that others are drawn to is to develop qualities that we are attracted to in others.

“Nothing shapes your life more than the commitments you choose to make.” 

“You are a winner; dare to claim it. You reserve your joy if you reverse your belief. You deserve to celebrate... It will happen when you dare to believe in God!”

“Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”

“To a sinner, a righteous person is an oddity and an abnormality. A Christian’s goodness is a rebuke to the wicked; his being right-side up is a reflection upon the worldling’s inverted position.”

“I like to say, “Nothing good happens accidently.” You can catch disease, but you cannot catch health.”

“We fight many battles, but probably the greatest battle we fight is the one with ourselves.”

“A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.

“Everything is energy and that's all there is. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

“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.”

“But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.”

“Nor am I greatly moved by jocular inquiries such as, 'Where will you put all the mosquitoes?' -- a question to be answered on its own level by pointing out that, if the worst came to worst, a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined.”

“Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act for yourself.”

“I read with interest Max Muller’s book, India—What Can It Teach Us? and the translation of the Upanishads published by the Theosophical Society. All this enhanced my regard for Hinduism, and its beauties began to grow upon me. It did not, however, prejudice me against other religions.”