The Death of Ivan Ilyich

by Leo Tolstoy

‘It’s as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That’s how it was. In society’s opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me … And now it’s all over. Nothing left but to die!

‘What if I really have been wrong in the way I’ve lived my whole life, my conscious life?’

‘Yes, it’s all been wrong,’ he told himself, ‘but that doesn’t matter. It’s possible to do the right thing. But what is the right thing?’ he wondered, and suddenly he was calm.