“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to
town.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and
impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of
happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in
imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing
these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could
consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire
or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not
have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a
wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that
there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what
it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the past he had been unable to see the great, teh unfathomable, the infinite, in anything.
He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had been seeking it. In everything near and
comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and meaningless.
He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and gazed into the distance where the
distance had seemed to him great and infinite only because they were not clearly visible. Such
had Europan life, politics, Masonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. Bet even
then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated that
distance too, and he had seen there the same triviality, worldliness, and absurdity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that
everyone around him lives in the same way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she
would not be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always
talk about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
