Leo Tolstoy

“It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.”

“I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my wife.”

“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”

“She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.”

“I only know this, that she thanks God for all her tribulations, and, above all, because her husband is dead.”

“And where love ends, hate begins”

“Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.”

“[T]he social relationship of young women to young men … now seemed to Kitty like ignominious exposure of merchandise to be taken by the highest bidder.”

“There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I admit, but . . .”

“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.”

“But live while you live, tomorrow you die...”

“Was ich wünschte, war Bewegung und nicht ein ruhiges Dahinfließen des Lebens. Es verlangte mich nach Aufregungen und Gefahren, nach Selbstaufopferung um eines Gefühlswillen. In mir war ein Überschuss von Kraft, der in unserem stillen Leben keinen Raum zur Bestätigung fand”

“Die Haupteigenschaften, die ihm diese allgemeine Achtung im Amt eingebracht hatten, bestanden erstens in seinem überaus nachsichtigen Verhalten, das auf dem Bewusstsein seiner eigenen Unzulänglichkeit beruhte, zweitens seiner durch und durch liberalen Einstellung - nicht jener, die er aus den Zeitungen geschöpft hatte, sondern derjenigen, die ihm im Blute lag und auf Grund derer er jedermann, unabhängig von Stand und Vermögen, völlig gleichmäßig behandelte, und drittens - das war die Hauptsache - in dem völligen Gleichmut, mit dem er sein Amt versah, sodass er stets die Ruhe bewahrte und sich niemals zu unbedachten Handlungen hinreißen ließ.”

“Yes, would have been,' he said sadly. 'He's precisely one of those people of whom they say that they're not meant for this world.”

“A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.”

“What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will die and learn everything--or stop asking.”

“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.”

“Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One must do nothing in excess”

“Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One should never overdo”

“The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary of hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.”

“There are as many kinds of love, as there are hearts”

“As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.”

“There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent”

“İnsanoğlunun alışamayacağı koşul yoktur, hele de çevresindeki herkesin aynı koşullarda yaşadığını görüyorsa.”

“Bütün kadınlar erkeklerden daha maddecidir. Biz aşktan muazzam bir şey yaparız, onlarsa her zaman terre-a-terre.”

“... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.”

“Der Mensch, der einen wirklich künstlerischen Eindruck empfängt, hat das Gefühl, dass er das, was ihm die Kunst enthüllt, bereits kannte, aber außer Stande war, den Ausdruck dafür zu finden.”

“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.”

“All is over…I have nothing but you, remember that.”“I can never forget what is my whole life.”

“That only shows you have no heart,’ she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him”

“She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And Vronsky’s face, always so firm and independent, held that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her round arms with their bracelets, enchanting was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, enchanting was that lovely face in its animation, but there was something terrible and cruel about her charm.”

“As he looked round, she too turned her head .Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she were recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and faint smile that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature were so brimming with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in that faintly perceptible smile.”

“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love”

“I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me”

“Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening…”

“I don’t count life as life without love”

“They haven’t an idea what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all”

“Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.”

“Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.”

“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.”

“That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.”

“nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen,and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.”

“Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life.”

“The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept?”

“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.”

“So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.”

“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?”

“I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is very silly but it will pass.”

“Noticis ir tas, ka es gaidu ciemiņus, un es nemaz negaidu ciemiņus, un nekas nav noticis, bet es lūdzu jūs aizbraukt”

“What is the matter with you?" asked Shcherbatsky."Nothing much, but there is little to be happy about in this world.""Little? You'd better come with me to Paris instead of going to some Mulhausen or other. You'll see how jolly it will be!""No, I have done with that; it is time for me to die.""That is a fine thing!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing. "I am only just beginning to live.""Yes, I thought so too till lately; but now I know that I shall soon die."Levin was saying what of late he had really been thinking. He saw death and the apprroach of death in everything; but the work he had begun interested him all the more. After all, he had to live his life somehow, til death came. Everything for him was wrapped in darkness; but just because of the darkness, feeling his work to be the only thread to guide him through the darkness, he seized upon it and clung to it with all his might.”