"They say: misfortunes, sufferings...well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God's sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it's only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there's life, there's happiness. There's much, much still to come."

"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking..."

"Toate familiile fericite se aseamAƒnAƒ A®ntre ele. Fiecare familie nefericitAƒ este nefericitAƒ A®n felul ei."

"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 the conception of religion, law, and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed. They grow up in ideas of negation in everything -- in other words, utter savages."

"In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer..."

"What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand."

"Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away."

"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. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life."

"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 mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love-he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires-boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose."

"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."

"To love one's neighbors to love one's enemies to love everything - to love God in all His manifestations - human love serves to love those dear to us but to love one's enemies we need divine love."

"The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God."

"Wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort, is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away."

"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?"

"To love life is to love God."

"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."

"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, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside."

"Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent."

"Dumnezeu este doar unul AYi acelaAYi pretutindeni."

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

"Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom."

"Faith is the force of life."

"God gave the day, God gave the strength."

"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."

"Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost."

"You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom."

"Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave."

"At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another."

"Mento mori-remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die-what makes this any different from a half hour?"

"It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals..."

"Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn."

"I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for the past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it is all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but..."

"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love."

"If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed."

"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."

"To destroy the life that dwells in othersis beyond your power. The life of those you have slainhas vanished from your eyes, but is not destroyed. Youthought to lengthen your own life and to shorten theirs,but you cannot do this. Life knows neither time norspace. The life of a moment, and the life of a thousandyears: your life and the life of all the visible and invisiblebeings in the world, are equal. To destroy life, or to alterit, is impossible; for life is the one thing that exists. Allelse, but seems to us to be."

"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 is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?"

"There are many faiths, but the spirit is one - in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one."

"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."

"Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

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

"He is not apprehended by reason, but by life."

"We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening."

"It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading."

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

"Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand."

"Never, never marry, my friend. Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the woman you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing. Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost."

"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 to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day."

"The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good."

"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 wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them."