Death Of Ivan Ilyich Quotes & Sayings

The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others. — Aesop

Introduction I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them. Although I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term, that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy. Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point. The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise. The one time I remember discussing mortality was during an hour we spent on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy's classic novella. — Atul Gawande

Tell truth, and shame the devil. — Jonathan Swift

What tormented Ivan Ilyich most," Tolstoy writes, "was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result." Ivan Ilyich has flashes of hope that maybe things will turn around, but as he grows weaker and more emaciated he knows what is happening. He lives in mounting anguish and fear of death. But death is not a subject that his doctors, friends, or family can countenance. That is what causes him his most profound pain. — Atul Gawande

In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying ... he simply did not, he could not possibly understand it. The example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal
had seemed to him all his life to be correct only in relation to Caius, but by no means himself. For the man Caius, man in general, it was perfectly correct; but he was not Caius and not man in general, he had always been quite, quite separate from all other human beings ... And Caius is indeed mortal, and it's right that he die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts
for me it's another matter. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too terrible.
So it felt to him. — Leo Tolstoy

Let us never give in to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day. Do not give in to pessimism and discouragement. We have the firm certainty that the Holy Spirit gives the Church with His mighty breath, the courage to persevere and also to seek new methods of evangelization, to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth. — Pope Francis

Most great books have been about striving in some sense. In a sense, money is the great topic of the novel. You couldn't necessarily say that about poetry. — Chad Harbach

We speak of stories ending, when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on. — Jacqueline Carey

God, I love sex. I mean really, who doesn't love this right here? — J. Daniels

I hate the very human inclination towards insensitivity — Megan McCafferty

The things we fear about poetry are the things that are good about poetry. — Jake Adam York

The one and only Gospel waits to be proclaimed by everyone together, in love and reciprocal esteem. — Pope Benedict XVI

Death is only one way of dying; living partially, living fearfully, is our more common, daily collusion with death. — James Hollis

One may not go and find love, it must be embraced. — T.F. Hodge