“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
“He got up, wishing to go around, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox right over Helene,
behind her back. Helene moved forward so as to make room and, smiling, glanced around. As
always at soirees, she was wearing a gown in the fashion of the time, quite open in front and
back. Her bust, which had always looked like marble to Pierre, was now such a short distance
from him that he could involuntarily make out with his nearsighted eyes the living loveliness of
her shoulders and neck, and so close to his lips that he had only to lean forward a little to
touch her. He sensed the warmth of her body, the smell of her perfume, and the creaking of
her corset as she breathed. He saw not her marble beauty, which made one with her gown, he
saw and sensed all the loveliness of her body, which was merely covered by clothes. And
once he had seen it, he could not see otherwise, as we cannot return to a once-exposed
deception.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same
necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be
qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so
on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more
often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be
true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet
we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers;
the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows
swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same
with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests
one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out
to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it
drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the
right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you
must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not
be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going
home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and
support.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.
Such is the quality of bees...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t count life as life without love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly
drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He stepped down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, yet he saw
her as one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed
shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady
passionless course of time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been
darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and
she began.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
