“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”

“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”

“Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul.”

“Pierre’s heart thrilled to these words as he gazed with shining eyes into the mason’s face. He listened without interrupting or asking any questions, and with all his soul he believed what this stranger was saying to him. Whether he was believing rational arguments coming from the mason, or trusting more like a child in the persuasive intonation, the sense of authority, the sincerity of the words spoken, the quavering voice that sometimes seemed on the verge of breaking down, or the gleaming aged eyes grown old in that conviction, or the tranquillity, the certainty and true sense of vocation radiating from the old man’s whole being and striking Pierre very forcibly, given the state of his own debasement and despair – whatever was happening to him, he longed to believe with all his soul, and he did believe and he felt a joyful sense of calm, renewal and return to life.”

“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”

“She did worse than break the law, she broke the rules”

“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”

“was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.”

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

“It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”

“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

“When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.”

“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed within me, and I began to live once again.”

“Higher and higher receded the sky, wider and wider spread the streak of dawn, whiter grew the pallid silver of the dew, more lifeless the sickle of the moon...”