“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
“Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position
not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel,
that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the
fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see
someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hear people
laughing.
Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who
composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into
another, but why this happens I don't know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could,
and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise
you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...
Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet,
yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive...and
strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet
joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a
cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life...he
began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of
true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself...wrote in
his diary, began afresh... ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest
which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and
impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the
more their poverty will increase.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are these deaths and revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in
the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague
hope of finding God. I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What,
then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without whom there could
be no life." To know God and to liVe come to one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot
change.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and
your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of
wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service
because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also
want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always
be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made
up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with
her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was
herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy.""I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was
not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin
was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed
Levin.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over
her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved
her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself
beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
