“One must be cunning and wicked in this world.”
―
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 crowd
as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light
on all round her. "Is it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to her?" he thought. The
place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one
moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to make
an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that people of all sorts were moving about
her, and that he too might come there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding
looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I turned my attention to every thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians,
I was horrified.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for
him--and intelligent Russian--the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything that I Know, I Know Only Because I Love...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be
calm, happy, and noble.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his fortune,and everyone is satisfied with his wit.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible . . . and to
serve others as much as possible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars
on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and
the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular
harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny
tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as
he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at
speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and
impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail
and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body
seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and
blossomed into new life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of
happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very
possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly, when I was told to consider him wise, I kept trying to, and thought I was stupid
myself because I was unable to perceive his wisdom; but as soon as I said to myself, he's
stupid (only in a whisper of course), it all became quite clear! Don't you think so?'
'How malicious you are to-day!'
'Not at all. I have no choice. One of us is stupid, and you know it's impossible to say so of
oneself.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever
he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the
district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing
itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely
necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and
diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself
more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of
what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much
better than before and that it was expanding more and more.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of
pleasure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way
because I am staggering from side to side! ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
