Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
If you want to be happy, be.
Spring is the time of plans and projects.
Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.
Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!
The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand." - Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}
Anything is better than lies and deceit!
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly
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.
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
Boredom: the desire for desires.
The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.
Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.
The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.
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.
If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.
True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
It's hard to love a woman and do anything.
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.
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.
I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.
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...
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.
Love those you hate you.
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
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.
He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.
Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.
To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.
Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...
Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it." - Vronksy {Anna Karenina}
Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.
We are asleep until we fall in Love!
I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.
I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.
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.
She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.
Everything I know, I know because of love.
All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.
Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.
Everything intelligent is so boring.
Music is the shorthand of emotion
Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.
How can one be well...when one suffers morally?
To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.
Every heart has its own skeletons.
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it.
It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.
I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible....except by getting off his back.
He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking.
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.
Everything depends on upbringing.
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.
Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
God is the same everywhere.
He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.
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.
The Kingdom of God is Within You,
My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
Enough or not...it will have to do
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.
Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.
Life did not stop, and one had to live.
Kings are the slaves of history.
There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.
Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?
In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
