“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly
drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of
ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not
seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted
of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell
yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve
chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry
when you’re old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre’s heart thrilled to these words as he gazed with shining eyes into the mason’s face.
He listened without interrupting or asking any questions, and with all his soul he believed what
this stranger was saying to him. Whether he was believing rational arguments coming from the
mason, or trusting more like a child in the persuasive intonation, the sense of authority, the
sincerity of the words spoken, the quavering voice that sometimes seemed on the verge of
breaking down, or the gleaming aged eyes grown old in that conviction, or the tranquillity, the
certainty and true sense of vocation radiating from the old man’s whole being and striking
Pierre very forcibly, given the state of his own debasement and despair – whatever was
happening to him, he longed to believe with all his soul, and he did believe and he felt a joyful
sense of calm, renewal and return to life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he
was here to be where she was.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the
Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics.
And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not
express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this is
naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most
cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and
brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a
false belief. And that hostility is increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology.
And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that theology
was itself destroying what it ought to produce.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an
impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on
him gave him happiness and pride.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that
occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being
but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a
part of that enormous whole.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t count life as life without love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness
either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The heroine of my writings is She, whom I love with all the forces of my being, She who
always was, is and will be beautiful, is Truth
―
Leo Tolstoy
