One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees.

Death is more certain than the morrow, than night following day, than winter following summer. Why is it then that we prepare for the night and for the winter time, but do not prepare for death. We must prepare for death. But there is only one way to prepare for death - and that is to live well.

The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible . . . and to serve others as much as possible.

I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.

I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.

There is only one time that is important -- NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time hat we have any power.

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