“No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she
could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of
knowledge is mere amusement. —VISHNU PURANA,”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of
fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she
would not be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves
must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe
that in anyone's time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them all. He
had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had been kept open
for him, but there had been conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his
appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev. So on receiving the
news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was
of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.”
―
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
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know...I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have
the right to do that, haven't I?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are such repulsive faces in the world.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
