“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One must be cunning and wicked in this world.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him
alone expect mercy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear
the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with
her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No, you’re going in vain,” she mentally addressed a company in a coach-and-four who
were evidently going out of town for some merriment. “And the dog you’re taking with you
won’t help you. You won’t get away from yourselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever
he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the
district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing
itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely
necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and
diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself
more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of
what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much
better than before and that it was expanding more and more.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man, to forget what you've said, as I
forget it," she said at last.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how
they should change. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of
happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very
possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow.”
―
Leo Tolstoy