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 … - Leo Tolstoy

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

"الإيمان بكل بساطة هو تكثيفٌ للحب. ينبغي أن تُحب أكثر، وسيتحول الحب إلى إيمان.
إن الرجل العاشق قد يحسب المرأة التي يحبها أروع امرأة على وجه الأرض، وهذا لون من الإيمان.
ومعدوم الإيمان لا يُمكنه أن يُحب؛ فهو "يُحب" هذه يومًا وتلك بعد عام؛ إن أرواح هؤلاء مُتسكعة شريدة عقيم!"

It occurred to him that he had not spent his life as he should have done. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false.