“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
“He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
-- he recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember
things that have never happened.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that
occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested
the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to
torture ourselves and one another?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without
fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state
of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt
to become worse than useless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful," he began with
a smile. "But I'll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy
to spin something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would
have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale... ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need
an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
