If you once realize that to-morrow, if not to-day, you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes insignificant!

Spring, love, happiness! Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!

Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.

A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out
forever.

It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.