#tolstoy

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century. ↗

— Norman MacCaig

#century #great #great love #i #last

And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#dishonesty #intellect #pride #stupidity #tolstoy

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#capitalism #dishonest #hierarchy #honest #labor

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. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#leo-tolstoy #literature #russia #change

...Tolstoy, one of the most interesting men who ever lived, explains that mystery of "interestingness" and how it passes from writer to reader. It is an *infection*. And it is *immediate*. ↗

— Brenda Euland

#tolstoy #writing #men

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#beauty #charm #diversity #leo-tolstoy #beauty

Anna Karenina is sheer perfection as a work of art. No European work of fiction of our present day comes anywhere near it. Furthermore, the idea underlying it shows that it is ours, ours, something that belongs to us alone and that is our own property, our own national 'new word'or, at any rate, the beginning of it. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#dostoyevsky #tolstoy #art

Nothing,' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness. ↗

— Gretchen Rubin

#kindness #tolstoy #beauty

While it's true that, as Tolstoy observed, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and everyone on planet Earth, vale of tears that it is, is certainly entitled to the specificity of his or her suffering, one nonetheless likes to think that literature has the power to render comprehensible different kinds of unhappiness. If it can't do that, what's it good for? ↗

— Elif Batuman

#tolstoy #unhappiness #family

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff. ↗

— Mike Tyson

#crap #deep #i #people #prison