“The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just another way of making money without work.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

Leo Tolstoy

“They haven’t an idea what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all”

Leo Tolstoy

“And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that it, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Pierre’s heart thrilled to these words as he gazed with shining eyes into the mason’s face. He listened without interrupting or asking any questions, and with all his soul he believed what this stranger was saying to him. Whether he was believing rational arguments coming from the mason, or trusting more like a child in the persuasive intonation, the sense of authority, the sincerity of the words spoken, the quavering voice that sometimes seemed on the verge of breaking down, or the gleaming aged eyes grown old in that conviction, or the tranquillity, the certainty and true sense of vocation radiating from the old man’s whole being and striking Pierre very forcibly, given the state of his own debasement and despair – whatever was happening to him, he longed to believe with all his soul, and he did believe and he felt a joyful sense of calm, renewal and return to life.”

Leo Tolstoy

“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."

Leo Tolstoy

“In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.”

Leo Tolstoy

"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling.

Leo Tolstoy

“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.

Leo Tolstoy

“If a teacher has only love for the cause, it will be a good teacher. If a teacher has only love for student, as a father, mother, he will be better than the teacher, who read all the books, but has no love for the cause, nor to the students. If the teacher combines love to the cause and to his disciples, he is the perfect teacher.”

Leo Tolstoy

“To claim that the supernatural and irrational form the basic characteristics of religion is much the same as noticing only the rotten apples and then claiming that the basic features of the fruit named apple are a flaccid bitterness and a harmful effect produced in the stomach.”

Leo Tolstoy

“And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to understand or pity him”

Leo Tolstoy


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