The Death of Ivan Ilyich/Master and Man Quotes

“Maybe I didn’t live as I should?” suddenly came into his head. “But how could that be, when I did everything as it should be done?” he said to himself, immediately driving off this, the one solution to the whole riddle of life and death, as though it were utterly out of the question.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man

“Everything she did for him was done entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her own sake, as though this was so improbable that he was bound to understand the opposite.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man

“way—he said he needed peace of mind, scrutinized everything that might disrupt his peace of mind, and the slightest disruption infuriated him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man

“In fact, however, the effect was the same as in the homes of all those people who are not quite rich enough, who want to look like the rich, and consequently look only like each other: damasks, mahogany, flowers, carpets and bronzes, dark woodstain and high polish—everything that people of a certain kind do to be like all other people of that certain kind. What he had was so similar to the norm that it did not even strike you, but to him everything seemed in some way extraordinary.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man

“Everything was done with clean hands in laundered shirts and embellished with French terms—and, above all, in the best possible company and consequently with the approval of the very best people.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man

“Apart from the considerations prompted by this death—the changes of post and possible permutations at work that were its probable consequences—the fact of a near acquaintance dying evoked in everyone who heard about it the happy feeling that he is dead, not I.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man