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401498b
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Pierre's insanity consisted in the face that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b138460
|
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.
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love
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Leo Tolstoy |
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1bd128a
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Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.
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success
philosophy-of-life
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Leo Tolstoy |
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febdd29
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There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those about him.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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769c015
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As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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81a915e
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If a man, before he passed from one stage to another, could know his future life in full detail, he would have nothing to live for. It is the same with the life of humanity. If it had a programme of the life which awaited it before entering a new stage, it would be the surest sign that it was not living, nor advancing, but simply rotating in the same place.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bc91874
|
But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink -- he recovered.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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10c9e94
|
But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness.
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morality
love
merit
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Leo Tolstoy |
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428d87c
|
He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9afc8f8
|
Love..." she repeated slowly, in a musing voice, and suddenly, while disentangling the lace, she added: "The reason I dislike this word because it means such a great deal to me, far more than you can understand."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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8b3fb4a
|
To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire population entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark, resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f5aa0f6
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It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, oth..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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3c3f967
|
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.
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vronsky
snow
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0e6e36a
|
People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the road on which he has been journeying divides into two branc..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f8d8060
|
He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
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happiness
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a2915e4
|
There are many faiths, but the spirit is one -- in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.
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spirit
faith
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Leo Tolstoy |
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80454b4
|
This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know.
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seryozha
vronsky
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Leo Tolstoy |
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3462709
|
A man of the present day, whether he believes in the divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to see that to assist in the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in taking from a poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle officials, who live in luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some man we have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the stree..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5997c69
|
Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.' 'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll.
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marriage
|
Leo Tolstoy |
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1e109a5
|
What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dedcfed
|
There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily life.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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7863cb7
|
Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them--or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibl..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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c963ad1
|
Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and so I can't live," Levin said to himself."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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2656ebe
|
He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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32b295a
|
I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless course of time.
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time
|
Leo Tolstoy |
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4b34282
|
Send him to the devil, I'm busy.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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db744ba
|
Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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4c5ec17
|
I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bdccd1c
|
Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as though wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it."
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love
vronsky
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
7f20118
|
He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both forgot everything but their love.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b792c6e
|
Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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fcd0315
|
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
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Leo Tolstoy |
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91881df
|
ltnbh ldy'm, l`ml, lSr`, lHrmn bsht~ 'nw`h, hdhh klh shrwT Drwry@ lyjwz l'Hd 'n ytjr' Ht~ `l~ lHlm blkhrwj mnh wlw llHZ@ wHd@. `lyn ky n`ysh bshrf 'n tnmzq, 'n nskhT `l~ 'nfsn, 'n nqtl, 'n nnkhd`, 'n nbd' wnhml, thm 'n n`yd wnbd' mn jdyd, w'n nHrm 'nfsn dwman, lTm'nyn@ dn@ fy lrwH.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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b8b69c5
|
A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0f4d2f1
|
most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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1d5614e
|
Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life
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marriage
truth
|
Leo Tolstoy |
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b67dc4d
|
Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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208b338
|
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand).
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irrational
|
Leo Tolstoy |
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1ed93fe
|
How strange, extraordinary, and joyful it was to her to think that her son - the little son, whose tiny limbs had faintly stirred within her twenty years ago, for whose sake she had so often quarreled with the count, who would spoil him, the little son, who had first learnt to say grusha, and then had learnt to say baba - that that son was now in a foreign land, in strange surroundings, a manly warrior, alone without help or guidance, doing..
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Leo Tolstoy |
|
e2c2d53
|
If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible, but it more closely suited his manner of life.
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|
morality
motivation
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
fa8f438
|
Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position"."
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marriage
love
ljewin
levin
pride
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
ee2bc0c
|
It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it.
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psychology
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
b6a06fb
|
Anna had the faculty of blushing.
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|
Leo Tolstoy |
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be2b4ae
|
the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only the griefs, only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.
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Leo Tolstoy |