“[...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.”

Leo Tolstoy

“I have waked up.”

Leo Tolstoy

“As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.”

Leo Tolstoy

“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”

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

“Send him to the devil, I'm busy.”

Leo Tolstoy

“There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I admit, but . . .”

Leo Tolstoy

“Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He knew so well this feeling of Levin's, knew that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two sorts: one sort was all the girls in the world except her, and these girls had all human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls; the other sort was her alone, with no weaknesses and higher than everything human.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as though wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.”

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

“My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons...”

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

“Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad HER having been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already... it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?”

Leo Tolstoy

“Formerly, when I was told to consider him wise, I kept trying to, and thought I was stupid myself because I was unable to perceive his wisdom; but as soon as I said to myself, he's stupid (only in a whisper of course), it all became quite clear! Don't you think so?' 'How malicious you are to-day!' 'Not at all. I have no choice. One of us is stupid, and you know it's impossible to say so of oneself.

Leo Tolstoy


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