All the preoccupations of childhood and youth dissipated from him without leaving a trace; he was given to lust, and to vanity—even, toward the end of school, to liberalism—but was protected by a strong inborn sense of moderation.

Apart from the curiosity it gave them about the changes in office it might occasion, the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance awoke as ever in each of them a familiar gladness: it’s he who’s dead, not me.

He had been nobody’s toady, neither as a boy nor later in adulthood, but from the youngest age he had been drawn, as a bird to the air, toward people in the upper echelons of society, adopting their affect

“We all die in our time. Why I should begrudge you a little sweat?” Of course what he was saying was that his sweat represented no burden, because it was spent on a dying man, just as he hoped that someone would sweat a little for him when his time came. Apart from the lying, or maybe on account of it, the greatest of Ivan Ilych’s torments was that

“In his last days he suffered terribly.” “Did he?” Pyotr Ivanovich asked. “Oh, it was awful! For the last few hours—not minutes, mind you, but hours—he cried out constantly. For days he shouted in anguish. It was intolerable. I do not even understand how I withstood it. You could hear him three doors down. Oh, what I’ve been through!”

Bear Ye My Burden Society.

Ivan Ilych, when he had been working for the governor, would often go out dancing; as an examining magistrate it was a rare exception. He danced as though only to prove it: I may be an agent of the reforms, I may have reached the fifth rank, but when it comes to dancing, I’m better than you, and you should know it. And so occasionally he would, at

He would call the footman, either his daughter or his wife might come to help; but everything would be all right, because he wasn’t thinking about It; It was nowhere to be seen. But whenever he moved things by himself his wife would say, “Calm down, let people help you, you’ll hurt yourself again,” and all at once It would shine through his screens

So of course, Gaius could be mortal, and it was right for him to die, but for me, little Vanya, for Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions—for me it’s a different story. It can’t possibly be that I have to die. That would be too horrible.