Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

“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.”

“In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.”

“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

“Theyve got no idea what happiness is, they dont know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

“Toate familiile fericite se aseamănă între ele. Fiecare familie nefericită este nefericită în felul ei.”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating touch.”

“Im like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe hes cold, and his clothes are torn, and hes ashamed, but hes not unhappy.”

“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”

“We are asleep until we fall in Love!”

“Love those you hate you.”

“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”

“Its hard to love a woman and do anything.”

“If you love me as you say you do, she whispered, make it so that I am at peace.”

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for ones neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”

“All his life the example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetters logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal - had seemed to him to be true only in relation to Caius the man, man in general, and it was quite justified , but he wasnt Caius and he wasnt man in general, and he had always been something quite, quite special apart from all other beings; he was Vanya, with Mama, with Papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with his toys and the coachman, with Nyanya, then with Katenka, with all the joys, sorrows, passions of childhood, boyhood, youth. Did Caius know the smell of the striped leather ball Vanya loved so much?: Did Caius kiss his mothers hand like that and did the silken folds of Caiuss mothers dress rustle like that for him? Was Caius in love like that? Could Caius chair a session like that? And Caius is indeed mortal and its right that he should die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my feelings and thoughts - for me its quite different. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too horrible.”

“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ”