“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding
him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of
comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others
are surrounded by the same complexity as he is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it
is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I say
quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug
between us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“... for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty
recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better
than before.”
―
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
“In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the
lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband
ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a
woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's
children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the
class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real
people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous,
plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything
else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness,
he occasionally spent nights at his desk.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how
constrained.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
