“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that
everyone around him lives in the same way.”
―
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
“When the examination was over, the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskovya
Fyodorovna informed Ivan Ilyich that it must of course be as he liked, but she had sent today
for a celebrated doctor, and that he would examine him, and have a consultation with Mihail
Danilovich (that was the name of his regular doctor). 'Don't oppose it now, please. This I'm
doing entirely for my own sake,' she said ironically, meaning it to be understood that she was
doing it all for his sake, and was only saying this to give him no right to refuse her request. He
lay silent, knitting his brows. He felt that he was hemmed in by such a tangle of falsity that it
was hard to disentangle anything from it. Everything she did for him was entirely for her own
sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her
own sake as something so incredible that he would take it as meaning the opposite.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t count life as life without love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One might murder and steal and yet be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat
him cordially.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme
law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is precious is not the reward but the work. And I wish you to understand that. If you
work and study in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard to you; but when you work, if
you love the work, you will find your reward in that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to
happen”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He knew so well this feeling of Levin's, knew that for him all the
girls in the world were divided into two sorts: one sort was all the girls in the world except her,
and these girls had all human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls; the other sort was her
alone, with no weaknesses and higher than everything human.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
