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

What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator?

I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.

Childhood candor... shall I ever find you again?

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and if we really want peace, then patriotism is a leftover from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and taught, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule. If Christianity is the truth, and if we wish to live in peace, then we must not only have no sympathy for the power of our country, but must even rejoice in its weakening and contribute to it.

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