“The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's
life. Her love for Rostov was not then a source of torment or agitation to her. That love had by
then filled her whole soul and become an inseparable part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Of late Princess Marya was convinced- though she never clearly in so
many words admitted it to herself- that she loved and was beloved.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All families are happy, all families are alike.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of
deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this
date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with
his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself.
All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all
the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he
might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the
knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out
the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of
being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-
out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely
a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out
quite the other way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the
inner workings of his very soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Therein is the whole business of one’s life; to seek out and save in the soul that which is
perishing.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
