The Death of Ivan Ilyitch

"It is finished!" said someone near him. He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.

There was no fear because there was no death.

This is wrong, it is not as it should be. All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you."

the question suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life has been wrong?"

"There is one bright spot there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more and more rapidly—in inverse ratio to the square of the distance from death,"

"Just as the pain went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse,"

What is this? Can it be that it is Death?" And the inner voice answered: "Yes, it is Death.

"Then what do you want now? To live? Live how? Live as you lived in the law courts when the usher proclaimed 'The judge is coming!' The judge is coming, the judge!" he repeated to himself. "Here he is, the judge. But I am not guilty!" he exclaimed angrily. "What is it for?" And he ceased crying, but turning his face to the wall continued to ponder on the same question: Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror? But however much he pondered he found no answer. And whenever the thought occurred to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from his not having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.

He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, and the absence of God. "Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me here? Why, why dost Thou torment me so terribly?

"What's to be done? These sick people do have foolish fancies of that kind, but we must forgive them."