“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

“Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.”

“Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now his passion was even doing battle with his love”

“Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.”

“Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance, 'Is this what I think?' "I understand,' she said, blushing. "What is this word?' he said, pointing to the "n' that signified the word "never." .... She wrote: t, I, c,g,n,o,a.”

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly

“He was not thinking that the Christian law which he had wanted to follow all his life prescribed that he forgive and love his enemies; but the joyful feeling of love and forgiveness of his enemies filled his soul.

“Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”

“Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn- out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.”

“There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And Itry licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing." "Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her bosom. "So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”

“As though tears were the indispensable oil without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sister, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other.”

“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force.

“Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.”