“Why do i live? In the infinity of space, and infinity of time infinitely small particles mutate
with infinite complexity. When you understand the laws of these mutations, you'll understand
why you live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of
ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not
seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted
of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with
her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was
herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy.""I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was
not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin
was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed
Levin.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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 asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to
quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With
the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase.
Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog
himself so as not to see the misery of his position.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the
husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their
family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same
house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband
and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully
conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was so sense in their living together,
and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one
another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did
not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran
wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a
friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day
before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way
because I am staggering from side to side! ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed
extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed,
he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that
moment fit into the rest of his life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
