“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how they should change. ”

“According to the biblical tradition the absence of work -- idleness -- was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men -- the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will.

“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike...What Pierre chiefly desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself.”

“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself”

“They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale... ”

“It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her feel of worship and awe of God.”

“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”

“intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party...”

“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”

“The Bible legend tells us that the absence of toil - idleness - was a condition of the first man's state of bliss before the Fall. This love of idleness has remained the same in the fallen man, but the curse still lies heavy on the human race....because our moral nature is such that we are unable to be idle and at peace.”

“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”

“As the sun and each atom of ether is a shphere complete in itself, yet at the same time only a part of a whole too vast for man to comprehend, so each individual bears within himself his own purpose, yet bears it ot serve a general purpose unfathomable to man.”

“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.”

“A man is never such an egoist as at moments of spiritual exaltation, when it seems to him that there is nothing in the world more splendid and fascinating than himself.”