If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name...

truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

A man’s every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.

Anna read and understood, but it was unpleasant to read, that is to say, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She was too eager to live herself.

In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.

Men never understand what honor is, though they’re always talking about it

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Respect is an invention of people who want to cover up the empty place where love should be.

Man lives consciously for himself but unconsciously he serves as an instrument for the accomplishment of historical and social ends.

God gave the day, God gave the strength.

Perhaps it’s because I appreciate all I have so much that I don’t worry about what I haven’t got.

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.

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...

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. Our attitude towards the fearful necessity of war ought to be stern....

The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.

These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to...

What am I coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. “You know that I have come to be where you are,” he said; “I can’t help it.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.Read more at

And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.

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

Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that’s like supposing the same candle could last you all your life

To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.

The business of art lies just in this, — to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees...

Why are you so sad? – Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.

In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God spare her that.

We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there’s no altering that.

If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.

It’s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a good man,to forget what you’ve said, as I forget it,” she said at last.”Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I,...

But that’s the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness...

Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they – friends from childhood – had to think about...

But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression of her eyes; the expression that came into them when she was not thinking of herself. As is the case with everyone, her face assumed an...

Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.

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,...

He suffered from an unlucky faculty—common to many men, especially Russians—the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity...

The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had...

There are two sides to the life of every man: there is his individual existence which is free in proportion as his interests are abstract; and his elemental life as a unit in the human...

Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child,...

the same question arose in every soul: “For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?”… p982

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.

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....

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...

Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn’t my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I...

Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky… we know there is no sky but only an atmosphere.

It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her...

Love them that hate you, but you can’t love those you hate.