“He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round her. "Is it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to her?" he thought. The place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to make an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he too might come there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

― Leo Tolstoy

“nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.

― Leo Tolstoy

“I do not live when I loose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek Him”

― Leo Tolstoy

“It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything."

― Leo Tolstoy

“He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Everything depends on upbringing. ”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for him--and intelligent Russian--the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“But it was not only by this feeling, as Varvara thought, that he was guided. Mingling with his pride, with his need always to be first, was another motive, at which Varvara did not guess - a truly religious urge. His disillusionment in Mary (his betrothed), whom he had imagined such a saint, his feeling of outrage was so cruel that he sank into despair; and despair led him - whither? To God, to the faith of his childhood, which had never lost its hold upon him.

― Leo Tolstoy

“He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?”

― Leo Tolstoy

“For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, misfortune his own fault.”

― Leo Tolstoy


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