Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.

We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?

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

Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart?

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.