In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried away by
passions; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes,
where were in some instances even more refined than now. If we have come to believe in the
perversity and coarse violence of that period, that is only because the traditions, memoirs,
stories, and novels that have been handed to us, record for the most part exceptional cases of
violence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that period was
turbulence, is as unjust as it would before a man, seeing nothing but the tops of trees beyond
a hill, to conclude that there was nothing to be found in that locality but trees.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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 crowdas a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light
all around her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into
Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood
which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all
around him are living in the same way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our
dreams.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me
to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed
within me, and I began to live once again.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had
hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were
as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to
seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I
should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me!... But to whom should I say this? To
some power--- indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which
I cannot express in words---The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who
has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the
nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something
incomprehensible but all important!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect
that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so
earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him
as worthy of her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why
not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that
someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves.
Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs
and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went on, that people who
solemnly utter those words, 'I love you,' either deceive themselves, or what's still worse,
deceive others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in
argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and worthy of a man of this
age to hold a position from which he receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take
from the people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing cannon, torpedoes, and
other instruments of butchery, so as to make war on people with whom we wish to be atpeace, and who feel the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devoting one's
whole life to constructing these instruments of butchery, or to preparing oneself and others for
the work of murder.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And
like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of
irreproachable morality.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
