“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
“I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed
extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed,
he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that
moment fit into the rest of his life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing
on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the
voices of those who were disputing honestly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper...there will be still the same wall between
the holy of holies of my soul and other people...but my life now, my whole life apart from
anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before,
but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But that's just the aim of civilization—to
make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All families are happy, all families are alike.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
