“A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess
even to himself, though it was so strong that now his passion was even doing battle with his
love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And I, too, am the same... only there is no love in my heart, or desire for love, no interest
in work, not contentment in myself. And how remote and impossible my old religious
enthusiasms seem now... and my former abounding life! What once seemed so plain and right
– that happiness lay in living for others – is unintelligible now. Why live for others, when life
has not attractions even for oneself?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own.
Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do
not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning
or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to
laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the
condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer
Sonata”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why do you need to be like anyone? You're good as you are,”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember
things that have never happened.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position
not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel,
that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the
fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see
someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hear people
laughing.
Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who
composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into
another, but why this happens I don't know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly,
undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the
aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where
there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that
the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought Prince Andrey, and all
at once there came upon him an irrational, spring feeling of joy and renewal. All the best
moments of his life rose to his memory at once. Austerlitz, with that lofty sky, and the dead,
reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, thrilled by the beauty of the
night, and that night and that moon- it all rushed at once into his mind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the
state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life -
those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not
lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with
her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was
herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy.""I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was
not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin
was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed
Levin.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that
they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only the griefs,
only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly
engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it
altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or
unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever
leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
