At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting. And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared. It started with law school. That had retained a little something that was really good: there was fun, there was friendship, there was hope. But in the last years the good times had become more exceptional. Then, at the beginning of his service with the governor, some good times came again: memories of making love to a woman. Then it became all confused, and the good times were not so many. After that there were fewer still; the further he went the fewer there were. Marriage.an accident and such a disappointment, and his wife's bad breath, and all that sensuality and hypocrisy! And the deadlines of his working life, and those money worries, going on for a year, two years, ten, twenty - always the same old story. And the longer it went on the deadlier it became.' It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me.. And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die! . Leo Tolstoy
About This Quote

This quote captures the essence of the life cycle of Ivan Ilyich. The start, middle, and end of his life are covered in this single sentence. He starts at the top, but slowly slips down the ladder until he finally reaches the bottom. This is a story of someone who was very successful at first, but then he slowly begins to fail because he misses childhood and his former friends, and then he realizes that his life is over.

Source: The Death Of Ivan Ilych

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More Quotes By Leo Tolstoy
  1. I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
  2. Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
  3. Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}
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