“Reason is often the slave of sin; it strives to justify it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and
physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded
flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and
ruined it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that
occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested
the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can
understand."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow- witted man if he has not
formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most
intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt,
what is laid before him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To live in the needs of the day, find forgetfulness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over."
"Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her,
as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“kitty always assumed the most beautiful things about people”
―
Leo Tolstoy