“If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Lord have mercy! Pardon and help us!" he repeated the words that suddenly and
unexpectedly sprang to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated those words not with his lips
only. At that instant he knew that neither his doubts nor the impossibility of believing with his
reason- of which he was conscious- all prevented his appealing to God. It all flew off like dust.
To whom should he appeal, if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love,
to be?
―
Leo Tolstoy
“was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go
round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards
the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and
Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides.
The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea,
nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth. If you would only look
up at the heavens, instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand
this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or for your country alone.”
―
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
“Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a
fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a
support.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The man who ten years earlier and one year later was considered a bandit and outlaw is
sent a two-day sail from France, to an island given into his possession, with his guards and
several million, which are paid to him for some reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it
would prevent her from being happy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great
freedom in the choice of occupation...is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble
difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the
gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet
gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that
same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat
him cordially.”
―
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
