“What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if all you have is from God, why boast as though you have accomplished something on your own?”

“Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.”

“Do what you don’t want to do to get what you want to get.”

“Long after you and I are gone, God will still be at work—and many of the things we prayed for will finally come to pass.”

“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the World.”

“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”

“It may interest you to know that Marconi’s “friends” had him taken into custody, and examined in a psychopathic hospital, when he announced he had discovered a principle through which he could send messages through the air, without the aid of wires, or other direct physical means of communication. The dreamers of today fare better.”

“The only species of human beings that are immune to failure are those that are dead and gone. Failure is constant; just prepare to deal with it!”

“If you don’t change the direction you are going, then you’re likely to end up where you’re heading…”

“Satan rejoices when we are inconsistent, because he knows that an inconsistent Christian is an ineffective Christian—or worse.”

“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

“Dream murderers are people who refuse to learn and optimize their own dreams. They discourage others from going ahead to make it happen. Why? Because they don't want go higher and they want everyone to be like them!”

“I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

“no punishment, in my opinion, is to great, for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin”

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth”