An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German possessed the mania of grandeur.
There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.
Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.
No one is satisfied with his position, but everyone is satisfied with his wit.
It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.
Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.
Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing—finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime.
He [Platon Karataev] did not understand, and could not grasp the significance of words taken apart from the sentence. Every word and every action of his was the expression of a force uncomprehended by him, which was his life.
It is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.
The subject of history is the life of people and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words — that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.
There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women, and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.
Governments not only are not necessary but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions.
When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of ‘greatness.’ ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a ‘great’ man can be blamed.
If it were not so frightening it would be amusing to observe the pride and complacency with which we, like children, take apart the watch, pull out the spring and make a toy of it, and are then surprised when the watch stops working.
What is a reason given to me, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!
He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.
A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure in which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.
In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states.
And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, today becomes the general opinion of the majority.
If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than a rich person.
The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods that distorted it, that finally, nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life — for home use, as it were — but that in public life all forms of violence — such as imprisonment, executions, and wars — might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.
Religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities…The so-called clergy stupefy the masses…They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her a farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. “Ah, what have you done to me?” it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.
The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed, she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at the blood, but enjoys serving the calf up with sauce
Aesthetic theories arose one hundred fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world. And notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else’s theory so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with such absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated by the educated and uneducated as though it were something indubitable and self-evident.
Why did it happen in this and not in some other way? Because it happened so!
And whatever people might say about the time having come when young people must arrange their future for themselves, she could not believe it any more than she could believe that loaded pistols could ever be the best toys for five-year-old children.
Energy rests upon love, and come as it will, there’s no forcing it.
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, and kills everything in order to examine it.
Error is the force that welds men together; the truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.
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.
To say that you can love one person all your life is just like saying that one candle will continue burning as long as you live.
Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.
He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.
In the year 1884, I wrote a book under the title “What I Believe,” in which I did in fact make a sincere statement of my beliefs. In affirming my belief in Christ’s teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe and consider as mistaken, the Church’s doctrine… Among the many points in which this doctrine falls short of the doctrine of Christ, I pointed out as the principal one the absence of any commandment of non-resistance to evil by force. The perversion of Christ’s teaching by the teaching of the Church is more clearly apparent in this than in any other point of difference.
Patriotism is a survival from barbarous times which must not only be evoked and educated but which must be eradicated by all means – by preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule.
How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it.
And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.
Every author is surrounded by an aura of adulation which he nurses so assiduously that he cannot begin to judge his own worth or see when it starts to decline.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.