Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (1877)

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He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly

Leo Tolstoy
Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

Leo Tolstoy
No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit

Leo Tolstoy
Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

Leo Tolstoy
Some mathematician, I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but in the search for it.

Leo Tolstoy
He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.

Leo Tolstoy
When you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.

Leo Tolstoy
Excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous

Leo Tolstoy
Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Leo Tolstoy
One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely 'The establishing of a fact.'

Leo Tolstoy
The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true

Leo Tolstoy
There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.

Leo Tolstoy
The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible... and to serve others as much as possible.

Leo Tolstoy
Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.

Leo Tolstoy
These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.

Leo Tolstoy
He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.

Leo Tolstoy
My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.'

Leo Tolstoy
Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.

Leo Tolstoy
Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

Leo Tolstoy
If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more, he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.
No; how so? she replied. He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's cultured?
It's an utterly different culture—their culture. He's cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.

Leo Tolstoy
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.

Leo Tolstoy
There was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her.

Leo Tolstoy
She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

Leo Tolstoy
He knew she was there by the joy and fear that overwhelmed his heart.

Leo Tolstoy
The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...

Leo Tolstoy
I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Leo Tolstoy
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.

Leo Tolstoy
There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.

Leo Tolstoy
He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.

Leo Tolstoy
When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.

Leo Tolstoy