But that's just the aim of civilization - to make everything a source of enjoyment.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertake. Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.

I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I?

If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents.

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

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.