The Death of Ivan Ilych (The Art of the Novella)
I began reading literature again: Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, Woolf, Kafka, Montaigne, Frost, Greville, memoirs of cancer patients—anything by anyone who had ever written about mortality.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Rather, I remember a scene from Tolstoy’s War and Peace , one I had not thought of in years. It is a scene wherein a character, Prince Andrei, suffers what is perhaps a mortal wound in the historical “Battle of the Three Emperors” in 1805 while fighting on the side of the Russians against his idol Napoleon:
"What is it? Am I falling? Are my legs giv... See more
Erik Hoel • Vigil
Mostly, he seemed incapable of truly appreciating other people’s happiness and was constantly pitying himself. To
Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga • The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
"We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?"—expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came.