“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
“Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a
fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a
support.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why
not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that
someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves.
Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs
and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went on, that people who
solemnly utter those words, 'I love you,' either deceive themselves, or what's still worse,
deceive others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what
purpose he had been placed in the word.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And
it's all so unimportant!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either
complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a
couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be
undertake.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it
because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or
because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every
action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not
free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
