TOLSTOY

 A

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.”

“[B]ut now, in these last three weeks of the march, Pierre had learned a new and more comforting truth–he had learned that there was nothing frightening in the world. He had learned that, as there can be no situation where a man is perfectly happy and free, so there is no situation where he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. He had learned that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close; that the man who suffers because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling asleep on the bare, damp ground.”

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”