“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.”

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1878), Part I, Ch. 9

About Leo Tolstoy

1828 – 1910

Russian novelist and moral philosopher, author of 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina'.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.”

“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”