“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“at one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished.

― Leo Tolstoy

“Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad HER having been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already... it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“You're not racing?" joked the officer. "Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully. And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her from being happy.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how they should change. ”

― Leo Tolstoy

“No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of beauty.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Anything is better than lies and deceit!

― Leo Tolstoy


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