Tolstoy Marriage Quotes & Sayings

Then as now much time was spent arguing about the rights of women, husband-and-wife relationships and freedom and rights within marriage, but Natasha had no interest in any such questions.
Questions like these, then as now, existed exclusively for people who see marriage only in terms of satisfaction given and received by the married couple, though this is only one principle of married life rather than its overall meaning, which lies in the family. — Leo Tolstoy

Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much better than before and that it was expanding more and more. — Leo Tolstoy

What right had I to imagine that she would wish to unite her life with mine? Who and What am I? A man of no account, wanted by no one and of no use to anyone. — Leo Tolstoy

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. — Leo Tolstoy

In marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself. — Leo Tolstoy

Brothers - it is not when ones were born by the same mother, brothers - it is when ones were born by the same idea. Kain hadn't a brother. Never. — Pavel Amnuel

Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position". — Leo Tolstoy

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. — Leo Tolstoy

Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.'
'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll. — Leo Tolstoy

But when, as is most often the case, the husband and wife accept the external obligation to live together all their lives and have, by the second month, come to loathe the sight of each other, want to get divorced and yet go on living together, it usually ends in that terrible hell that drives them to drink, makes them shoot themselves, kill and poison each other — Leo Tolstoy

Food feeds both the body and soul - there are clear reasons to eat a balanced diet, but there are also reasons you cling to your mom's secret chicken noodle soup recipe when you're sick. — Michael Mina

Television is a formidable thinking tool. You are like an analyst to whom society's subconscious would be offered wide open ... — Serge Daney

You disapprove," she commented. "Because I'm a girl?" "No." The voice paused. "Females are often the best hunters. They must provide for the young and survive when the males are too busy posturing to do so. But this is not the way with humans." "Humans? — Meagan Spooner

They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox. — Leo Tolstoy

As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another. — Leo Tolstoy

Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all that ornaments the body. — Leo Tolstoy

The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage, but to bring more love and truth into the world. We marry to assist each other in this task. The most selfish and hateful life of all is that of two beings who unite in order to enjoy life. The highest calling is that of the man who has dedicated his life to serving God and doing good, and who unites with a woman in order to further that purpose. — Leo Tolstoy

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility. — Leo Tolstoy

Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take. In the event of a patent claim, we will try to find prior art to the claim of the patent. — Miguel De Icaza

On a waste place strewn with bricks in the outskirts of a town twilight was falling. A star or two appeared over the smoke, and distant windows lit mysterious lights. The stillness deepened and the loneliness. Then all the outcast things that are silent by day found voices. — Lord Dunsany

Live-action has always been my focus and my passion. I love voice-over, and I definitely could see myself doing some voice-over, as much as I could, and even if I ended up doing only that for the rest of my life, and I could be successful at it, that would be great. But I think my real dream is to do films and live-action films. — Jeremy Shada

The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. — Leo Tolstoy

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

The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not understand," rejoined the lady, "is that only love consecrates marriage, and that the real marriage is that which is consecrated by love. — Leo Tolstoy

I'm thrilled of the acceptance I get abroad. The people are so hearty, warm and grateful and I feel privileged having seen so many countries and some of the greatest monuments. — Daniel Radcliffe

I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old. — Leo Tolstoy

The character was created by you, if you kill yourself you kill the character, it happen because you done it... you don't realise it! — Deyth Banger

The chief cause of unhappiness in married life is that people think that marriage is sex attraction, which takes the form of promises and hopes and happiness - a view supported by public opinion and by literature. But marriage cannot cause happiness. Instead, it is always torture, which man has to pay for satisfying his sex urge. — Leo Tolstoy

He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything, simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to be quite the opposite. — Leo Tolstoy

I attended a symposium, an event named after a fifth century (B.C.) Athenian drinking party in which nonnerds talked about love; alas, there was no drinking, and mercifully, nobody talked about love. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Why did you give me a freedom for which I was unfit? Why did you stop teaching me? If you wished it, if you guided me differently, none of all this would happened. I should not now be punished, for no fault at all, by your indifference and even contempt, and you would not have taken from me unjustly all that I valued in life.
Let us be thankful that there is an end of the old emotions and excitements.
That day ended a romance of our marriage. Old feeling became a precious irrecoverable remembrance but a new feeling of love for my kids and their father laid the foundation of a new life and quite different happiness. That life and happiness lasted until to the present time. — Leo Tolstoy