“So you make a sacrifice!' he threw special emphasis on the last word. 'Well, so do I. What could be better? We complete in generosity--what an example of family happiness!”

“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.”

“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.

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

“Everything I know, I know because of love.”

“They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale... ”

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

“Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.”

“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”

“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy.”

“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.”

“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before...”

“The law of God is not to return evil for evil; indeed, if you try in this way to stamp out wickedness it will come upon you all the stronger. It is not difficult for you to kill the man, but his blood will surely stain your own soul. You may think you have killed a bad man--that you have gotten rid of evil--but you will soon find out that the seeds of still greater wickedness have been planted within you.”

“A man is never such an egoist as at moments of spiritual exaltation, when it seems to him that there is nothing in the world more splendid and fascinating than himself.”

“[...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.”