“I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my
wife.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the
ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which
there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime
something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no
conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.”
―
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
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without
hurting anybody until death takes over.”
―
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
“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
“Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance, 'Is this what I think?' "I
understand,' she said, blushing. "What is this word?' he said, pointing to the "n' that signified
the word "never." .... She wrote: t, I, c,g,n,o,a.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Faith is neither hope nor trust, but a particular spiritual state. Faith is man’s awareness that
his position in the world obliges him to perform certain actions. A person acts according to his
faith, not as the catechism says because he believes in things unseen as in things seen, nor
because he wishes to achieve things hoped for, but simply because having defined his
position in the world it is natural for him to act according to it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
