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.

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

Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.

To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it." - Vronksy {Anna Karenina}