“Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had
expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected
surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step
that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a
man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake,
should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly;
that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there
was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be
sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful,
was very difficult.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Eveyrbody thinks of changing Humanity..and nobody thinks of changing Himself...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One might murder and steal and yet be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are such repulsive faces in the world.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with
the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and
that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains
this aim through love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was no solution but that usual solution which life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer one must live in the needs of one that - that is,
forget oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories,
but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges
with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot
change.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
