“Answer me two more questions,’ said the King. ‘The first is, Why did the earth bear such
grain then and has ceased to do so now? And the second is, Why your grandson walks with
two crutches, your son with one, and you yourself with none? Your eyes are bright, your teeth
sound, and your speech clear and pleasant to the ear. How have these things come about?’
And the old man answered:
‘These things are so, because men have ceased to live by their own labour, and have taken to
depending on the labour of others. In the old time, men lived according to God’s law. They had
what was their own, and coveted not what others had produced.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing.”
―
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
“He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in
consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world,
obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and
constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both
forgot everything but their love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is,
forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could
not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the
dream of daily life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of
deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this
date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with
his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself.
All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all
the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he
might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the
knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out
the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of
being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-
out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely
a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out
quite the other way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in
the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found
the Master.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought
it as well to secure his adherence, showed off his calm, impartial sagacity before Prince
Andrey, and flattered him with that delicate flattery that goes hand in hand with conceit, and
consists in a tacit assumption that one's companion and oneself are the only people capable
of understanding all the folly of the rest of the world and the sagacity and profundity of their
own ideas.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing."
"Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her
bosom.
"So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and
the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do
not see in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He stepped down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, yet he saw
her as one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place, settled down, and
laid to rest.”
―
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
“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
