“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never
could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“According to the biblical tradition the absence of work -- idleness -- was a condition of the
first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in
fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread
by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both
idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man
could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he
would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such
state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men -- the military
class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of
military service, and it always will.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of
being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I
don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not
able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another
person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the
hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Answer me two more questions,’ said the King. ‘The first is, Why did the earth bear such
grain then and has ceased to do so now? And the second is, Why your grandson walks with
two crutches, your son with one, and you yourself with none? Your eyes are bright, your teeth
sound, and your speech clear and pleasant to the ear. How have these things come about?’
And the old man answered:
‘These things are so, because men have ceased to live by their own labour, and have taken to
depending on the labour of others. In the old time, men lived according to God’s law. They had
what was their own, and coveted not what others had produced.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of
truth.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't
sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more
than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had
to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and
painful dying.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“she smiled at him, and at her own fears.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
