The Death of Ivan Ilych Quotes

The Death of Ivan Ilych is a novella by Leo Tolstoy -- first published in 1886. This famous work is often studied in literature classrooms. In this work, Leo Tolstoy addresses some of the meaning of life, and the inevitability of death. Here are a few quotes.

• "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
  
  
• "In his work itself, especially in his examinations, he very soon acquired a method of eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal aspect of the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to a form in which it would be presented on paper only in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter, while above all observing every prescribed formality." - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
  
  
• "It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death." - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
  
  
• "'Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,' it suddenly occurred to him. 'But how could that be, when I did everything properly?' he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible." - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
  
  
• "Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light." - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
  
  
• "Just then his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on the boy's head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry." - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych