The Death of Ivan Ilych

by Leo Tolstoy

Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, and the absence of God.

He suffered ever the same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness pondered always on the same insoluble question: “What is this? Can it be that it is Death?” And the inner voice answered: “Yes, it is Death.”