“The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day
and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor
for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better
than before.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was
enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a
stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his
straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now
sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression of her eyes; the expression that
came into them when she was not thinking of herself. As is the case with everyone, her face
assumed an affected, unnatural, ugly expression as soon as she looked in the looking glass.”
―
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
“After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began
singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the
middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat
from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha
singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same
time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For
what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? For his hopes for the
future? Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid
sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him,
and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was. This contrast
made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one
another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look
established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of
things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of
humanity and were brothers.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a
fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a
support.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Now, however, he had learned to see the great, the eternal, the infinite in everything, and
therefore, in order to look at it, to enjoy his contemplation of it, he naturally discarded teh
telescope through which he had till then been gazing over the heads of men, and joyfully
surveyed the ever-changeing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And
the closer he looked, the happier and more seren he was. The awful question: What for? a
simple answer was now always ready in his soul: Because there is a God, that God without
whose will not one hair of a man's head falls.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the
best happiness was already in the past.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
