“All things look good from far away and it is man's eternally persistent childlike faith in the reality of that illusion that has made him the triumphant restless being he is.”

“Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.”

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man across from him...came to hate him for that look. The young man lit a cigarette from his, tried talking to him, and even jostled him, to let him feel that he was not a thing but a human being, but Vronsky went on looking at him as at a lampost, and the young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the pressure of this non-recognition of himself as a human being...”

“It´s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. Is shows he isn´t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can´t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality.”

“Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”