In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried away by passions; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes, where were in some instances even more refined than now. If we have come to believe in the perversity and coarse violence of that period, that is only because the traditions, memoirs, stories, and novels that have been handed to us, record for the most part exceptional cases of violence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that period was turbulence, is as unjust as it would before a man, seeing nothing but the tops of trees beyond a hill, to conclude that there was nothing to be found in that locality but trees.”

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

“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

Leo Tolstoy

“Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life.”

Leo Tolstoy

“She danced the dance so well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched that slender and graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet, belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Was it through reason that I arrived at the necessity of loving my neighbor and not throttling him?...Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence and the law which demands that everyone who hinders the satisfaction of my desires should be throttled. That is the conclusion of reason. Reason could not discover love for the other, because it’s unreasonable.”

Leo Tolstoy

"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling.

Leo Tolstoy

“It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.”

Leo Tolstoy

“I turned my attention to every­ thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I was horrified.”

Leo Tolstoy

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.”

Leo Tolstoy

“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant!”

Leo Tolstoy

“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.”

Leo Tolstoy

“With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through with it.”

Leo Tolstoy


Contact Us


Send us a mail and we will get in touch with you soon!

You can email us at: contact@fancyread.com
Fancyread Inc.