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.

I felt a wish never to leave that room – a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change.

One’s writing is good only when the intelligence and the imagination are in equilibrium. As soon as one of them overbalances the other, it’s all up; you may as well throw it away and begin...

Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.

Hay … tantas clases de amor como corazones

he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk.

Tal pregunta no tenía otra respuesta que la que la vida da a todas las preguntas irresolubles: vivir el día y procurar olvidar.

He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable...

But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.

If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible, but...

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

Book is a nice companion

Among the people to whom he belonged, nothing was written or talked about at that time except the Serbian war. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time, it now did for the...

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

In historical events great men – so-called – are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connexion with the event itself.

Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it...

Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy

The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy; it is the negation of Christianity.

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

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?

Fate acts with reason. And we are always passing judgment; that’s not right, and this doesn’t suit us. Our happiness, my dear, is like water in a drag-net; you drag, and it is all puffed...

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine — not a disease...

It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

Why nowadays there’s a new fashion every day.

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

And where love ends, hate begins

Dumnezeu este doar unul şi acelaşi pretutindeni.

But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had not...

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.

Maybe its because i rejoice over what i have and don’t grieve over what i don’t have”.

Himmlisch ist’s wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn’s nich gelungen Hatt’ ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!Loosely translated:It is heavenly, when I overcomeMy earthly desiresBut nevertheless, when I’m not successful,It can also be...

The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember things that have never happened.

But when, as is most often the case, the husband and wife accept the external obligation to live together all their lives and have, by the second month, come to loathe the sight of each...