Good fiction doesn’t come out of the basic conflict of good versus bad. Instead, it comes out of a conflict between good and good.
If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
We are asleep until we fall in love.
Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.
Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.
You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.
Teach French and unteach sincerity.
If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!
I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn.
Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.
He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed impossible.
Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.
He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal.
He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.
The true meaning of Christ’s teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support.
My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.
God knows, but He’s waiting.