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54337a6
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I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything." "Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling. "The most utterly loathsome and coarse; I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everythi..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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065e4d7
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Speech is silver but silence is golden.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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1909a2a
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It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.
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resurrection
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Leo Tolstoy |
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59a3593
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but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0029268
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Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5b024fd
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I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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ba70cfa
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A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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1f2c850
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She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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207fa14
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At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?
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Leo Tolstoy |
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938fd2c
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Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6c26929
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It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries--and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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17311bc
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Count Vronsky: I love you! Anna Karenina: Why? Count Vronsky: You can't ask Why about love!
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f1b7ae7
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He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320
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Leo Tolstoy |
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ba82ba1
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For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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734613a
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All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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e41a4b8
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I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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2fcac26
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The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just another way o..
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work
banks
earnings
leo-tolstoy
railways
monopolies
labor
profits
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Leo Tolstoy |
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baf586d
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The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly, undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought P..
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nature
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Leo Tolstoy |
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9648785
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Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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ad3c1c8
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There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy. It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bbb0d23
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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 famil..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f84bad7
|
You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so...yes, love!..."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0062678
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Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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eb769bf
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How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one.
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youth
grownup
tolstoy
child
childhood
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6d6b5fa
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But live while you live, tomorrow you die...
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Leo Tolstoy |
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11fc46b
|
How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!
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love
levin
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bf49b07
|
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.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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f9499bd
|
This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.
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history
humanity
life
motives
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Leo Tolstoy |
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41a0f81
|
Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise." "Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I..."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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41fa433
|
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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ffb2bfd
|
Nothing has been discovered, nothing has been invented. We can only know that we know nothing. And that's the highest degree of human wisdom.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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0a012f8
|
As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died. What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek Him. "What more do you seek?" exclaimed a voice within me. "This is He. He is that without which o..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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18cc404
|
Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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6fc7eff
|
To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of ..
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war
reason
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Leo Tolstoy |
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a5f035f
|
In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.
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life
love
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dd8cd50
|
Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .
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Leo Tolstoy |
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5ca3836
|
No one is satisfied with his fortune,and everyone is satisfied with his wit.
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dd8bc4b
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Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy
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war
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Leo Tolstoy |
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10c42e3
|
All is over...I have nothing but you, remember that." "I can never forget what is my whole life."
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Leo Tolstoy |
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eee033c
|
He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit's upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest. Suddenly, in the midst of ..
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Leo Tolstoy |
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cfb17e9
|
Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.
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goodness
truth
|
Leo Tolstoy |
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db4dce0
|
I think love, both kinds of love, which you remember Plato defines in his "Symposium" - both kinds of love serve a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For such love there can be no tragedy. "Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good bye," and that's the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, becau..
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constantine-dmitrich-levin
leo-tolstoy
|
Leo Tolstoy |
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f60a745
|
It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those pe..
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wealth
societal-norms
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Leo Tolstoy |
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d911cf0
|
Respect is an invention of people who want to cover up the empty place where love should be.
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respect
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Leo Tolstoy |