“Well Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I
warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and
horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist— and I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing
more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave', as you call
yourself! But how are you? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was
difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Only during a period of war does it become obvious how millions of people can be
manipulated. People, millions of people, are filled with pride while doing things which those
same people actually consider stupid, evil, dangerous, painful, and criminal, and they strongly
criticize these things—but continue doing them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of
an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“ I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?" she said, letting fall the hand with
which she had grasped the doorpost. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her
face.
"What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have
come to be where you are," he said, "I can’t help it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was
enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a
stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his
straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now
sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are as many kinds of love, as there are hearts”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anything is better than lies and deceit!
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while
men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had
even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was
not thinking of the meaning of his life.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive,
and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained
unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied
him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered
everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that his undertaking was the
only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining
strength.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
