“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”

“As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.”

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.”

“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself”

“It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over." "Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.”

“In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.”

“He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.”

“In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.”

“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and more.”

“Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.