Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

He speaks passionately, waving his arms. But it is clear that he is searching for words, and that the words which come to him seem inadequate to express what moves him.

I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.

This praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to [Tsar] Nicholas, because, though he was proud of his strategic abilities, at the bottom of his heart he was aware that he had none. And now he wanted to to hear more detailed praise of himself.

He had but to call to mind what he had been three months before and what he was now. To call to mind with what regularity he had been going downhill for every possibility of hope to be shattered.

He [Tsar Nicholas I] had done much evil to the Poles. To explain that evil he had to be convinced that all Poles were scoundrels. And Nicholas regarded them as such and hated them in proportion to the evil he had done them.

Noticis ir tas, ka es gaidu ciemi?us, un es nemaz negaidu ciemi?us, un nekas nav noticis, bet es l?dzu j?s aizbraukt

Love? What is love?" he thought. "Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them...

But as a young man in love trembles and thrills, not daring to utter what he dreams of by night, and looks about fearfully, seeking help or the possibility of delay and flight, when the desired moment comes and he stands alone with her, so now Rostov, having attained what he desired more than anything in the world, did not know how to approach the sovereign and presented thousands of considerations to himself for why it was unsuitable, improper, and impossible.

Oblonsky's tendency and opinions were not his by deliberate choice: they came of themselves, just as he did not choose the fashion of his hats or coats but wore those of the current style. Living in a certain social set, and having a desire, such as generally develops with maturity, for some kind of mental activity, he was obliged to hold views, just as he was obliged to have a hat. If he

Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on which one has to do one's work.

In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart.

What is music? What does it do to us? And why does it do to us what it does? People say that music has an uplifting effect on the soul: what rot! It isn't true. It's true that it has an effect, it has a terrible effect on me, at any rate, but it has nothing to do with any uplifting of the soul. Its effect on the soul is neither uplifting nor degrading — it merely irritates me.

One needs a vision of the promised land in order to have the strength to move.

Remember that there is only one important time and is Now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person with whom you are, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future. The most important pursuit is making that person, the one standing at you side, happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.

satu-satunya yang wajib-dalam hidup dan seni-adalah menyatakan kebenaran

and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being. With

All the wounds of society, the wounds of poverty, of vice, of ignorance—all will be laid bare. Is there not something re-assuring in this?

I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it's all dust and ashes.

And the most awful thing about it is that it's all my fault—all my fault, though I'm not to blame.

I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices," Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't live with him. Do you understand?

At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting. And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared.

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

So at least it seemed to Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything.