“The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in
words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people,
appears to be impossible.”
―
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
“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she
could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who,
quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman
whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nothing has been discovered, nothing has been invented. We can only know that we know
nothing. And that's the highest degree of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one
advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics
had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were
held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed
them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of
themselves within him.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however
trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions
if one's entire attention is devoted to it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“-Why are you so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
