“Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her
little feet in their satin dancing shoes performed their role swiftly, lightly, as if they had wings,
while her face was radiant and ecstatic with happiness.”
―
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
“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she
thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for
getting on.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in
all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.”
―
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
“He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the
enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think love, both kinds of love, which you remember Plato defines in his "Symposium" -
both kinds of love serve a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only
the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For
such love there can be no tragedy. "Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good bye," and that's
the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, because there
everything is clear and pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him
alone expect mercy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while
men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed
shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady
passionless course of time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure
themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the
one which coincides with the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of
fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
