“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same
as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over
the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I
am seeing?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand
that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You
can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar
charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new
to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day
outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
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
“Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is
something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is
common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of
knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not
search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying
man seeking salvation. I found nothing.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
