“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
“He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew
that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to
him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if
the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll
as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a
distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both
ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but
every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing
humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by
words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things
each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to
excite and irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he
took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men's
opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him
an amused and gentle smile.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He knew so well this feeling of Levin's, knew that for him all the
girls in the world were divided into two sorts: one sort was all the girls in the world except her,
and these girls had all human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls; the other sort was her
alone, with no weaknesses and higher than everything human.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon.
Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly now,"
he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your advice.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while
rationally justifying the other's activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that
the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to
quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With
the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme
law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality,
and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of
born freethinker has been appearing, who’ve never even heard that there have been laws of
morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative
ideas about everything, that is savages.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she
would not be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
