“Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it
would prevent her from being happy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow
creatures, are those that have remote consequences.”
―
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
“Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the
person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
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
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to
heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not
infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are
contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously
and cannot even insult each one another.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of
truth.
―
Leo Tolstoy
