“But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the
thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of whichhe felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of
kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called
heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life
that present themselves, and desire that alone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I
am seeing?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Speech is silver but silence is golden.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect
that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so
earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him
as worthy of her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to
follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she
read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless
steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech,
she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she
too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the
smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on
earth”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle
could last you all your life”
―
Leo Tolstoy
