“but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.”

“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”

“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man can say to another”

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

“Where there is law there is injustice”

“He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything, simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to be quite the opposite.”