"The most utterly loathsome and coarse; I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits,
but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing
was left but the most loathsome.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary of
hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting
for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were
already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one's own work. And
he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.”
―
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
“the superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great
freedom in the choice of occupation...is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble
difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you could forget and forgive what happened. He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters
of the following phrase, "I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love
you.”"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew
that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to
him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if
the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll
as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a
distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both
ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from
the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on
with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put
myself in such a position"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the
unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my
mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other
people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail
in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray--but my life now,
my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not
meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in
my power to put into it!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot
carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine
law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot
even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize
the duty of what is called allegiance.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the
happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and
the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
