Man has received direct from God only one instrument wherewith to know himself and to know his relation to the universe--he has no other--and that instrument is reason.

It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.

God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling.

Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?

I believe in one, incomprehensible God, the immortality of the soul and eternal retribution for our acts.

she smiled at him, and at her own fears.

So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.