Quotes from The Death of Ivan Ilych

Quotations follow the Peter Carson translation (Liveright, 2014) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

2. 3

   The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself.

3. 4

   Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from Ivan Ilych's death, the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, "it is he who is dead and not I."

4. 5

   What if my whole life has been wrong?

5. 6

   There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.

6. 7

   In place of death there was light.

7. 8

   It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true.

8. 9

   What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill.

9. 10

   Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me here? Why, why dost Thou torment me so terribly?

10. 11

    "What is it you want?" was the first clear conception capable of expression in words, that he heard. "What do you want? What do you want?" he repeated to himself. "What do I want? To live and not to suffer," he answered.

11. 12

    For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled in that black sack into which he was being thrust by an invisible, resistless force.

12. 13

    "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!"