“And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.”

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”

“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”

“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless course of time.”

“in infinite space and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex, is differentiated",is to say nothing at all. Those are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite is neither complex nor simple, no forward nor backward, or better or worse.”

“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. ”

“Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say...”

“God is the same everywhere.”

“In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat him cordially.”

“For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in these days?" said the ambassador's wife. "What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up still," said Vronsky.”

“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.”

“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”

“I don't think anything," she said, "but 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....”

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

“Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.”