The means to gain happiness is to throw out from oneself like a spider in all directions an adhesive web of love, and to catch in it all that comes
If there is no higher reason--and there is none--then my own reason must be the supreme judge of my life
Was it by reason that I attained the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason!
Laws are rules, made by people who govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered.
Laws are rules established by men who are in control of organized violence for the non fulfillment of which those who do not fulfill them are subjected to personal injuries, the loss of liberty, and even capital punishment.
The poet takes the best things out of his life and puts them into his work. Hence his work is beautiful and his life bad.
Without knowing why I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love.
There was no answer except the usual answer life gives to the most complicated and insoluble questions. This answer is: carry on with your everyday affairs, that is to say, put it out of your mind.
Ivan Ilyich's life was most simple, and most ordinary, and therefore most terrible.
