Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.
One must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible. I’m alive and it’s not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.”But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you’ll sit without moving, without undertaking anything…”Life won’t leave one alone as it is.
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life – becoming a better person.
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
The best stories don’t come from “good vs. bad” but “good vs. good.
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.
He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.
He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it
If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness…
They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us–there is no life.
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty.
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.
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.
The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life – that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true
It can’t be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling…
It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.
And you know, there’s less charm in life when you think about death–but it’s more peaceful.
Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand.”
– Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}
Here I am…wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end–that there is such a thing as death.
And you know, there’s less charm in life when you think about death–but it’s more peaceful.
When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes–is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating touch.
Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.
In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard. And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out forever.
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
Here I am…wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end–that there is such a thing as death.