War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will.

It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science...

And you know, there’s less charm in life when you think about death–but it’s more peaceful.

If you want to be Happy,BE

He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed impossible.

You think that your laws correct evil – they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil – by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.

Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrova could not be…Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace…hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of...

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.

Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.

what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?

A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had...

Peluru, kamu panas, dan kamu membawa kematian, tetapi bukankah kamu abdiku yang setia? Tanah hitam, kamu akan menyelimutiku, tetapi bukankah aku menginjakmu dengan kudaku? Kamu, maut, kamu dingin, tetapi akulah tuanmu.Tanah akan mengambil tubuhku, langit...

What’s all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.

I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.

Life meanwhile, the actual life of men with their real interests of health and sickness, labour and rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, affection, hatred, passion, went its way, as always,...

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender,...

The very nastiest and coarsest, I can’t tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is...

Formerly…when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity…for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was...

With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to...

It is beyond the power of the human intellect to encompass all the causes of any phenomenon. But the impulse to search into causes is inherent in man’s very nature.

And indeed, if Eugene Iretnev was mentally deranged when he committed this crime, then everyone is similarly insane. The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do...

Everything I know, I know because of love.

One must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible. I’m alive and it’s not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I...

It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced that no religion is no longer...

Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent.

I think the motive force of all our action is, after all, personal happiness.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the...

Qualquer que seja ou venha a ser o nosso destino, somos nós que o fazemos, e não nos lamentamos.

Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the...

Happiness is pleasure without regret

Only by assuming an infinitesimally small unit for observation – a differential of history (that is, the common tendencies of men) – and arriving at the art of integration (finding the sum of the infinitesimals)...

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.

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

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

What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!

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...

The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability...

I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.

At one time,’ Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, ‘at one time a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in...

Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha’s wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no...

Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled.But learning just as certainly that his will is...

The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new...

They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us–there is no life.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

How good is it to remember one’s insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one’s abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison...

But to us of a later generation…it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg...

When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change.