“I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this
whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can
have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse.
It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds
no outlet in our quiet life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he
said was very clever or very stupid.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I'd rather end up wishing I hadn’t than end up wishing I had.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences.
The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the
knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop
you from understanding the basic rules of life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's
life. Her love for Rostov was not then a source of torment or agitation to her. That love had by
then filled her whole soul and become an inseparable part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Of late Princess Marya was convinced- though she never clearly in so
many words admitted it to herself- that she loved and was beloved.”
―
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
“A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it
up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper,
scattered the peas in all directions and ran away”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same
as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
