"I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues."

"You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn."

"...we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others."

"...the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now."

"I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."

"There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain."

"There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself."

"I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. ... They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written."

"They are like a face full of character that intrigues and excites you, but that on closer acquaintance you discover is merely the mask of a vulgar soul. Such is Tourane."

"The Chinese are the aristocracy of the East."

"Mandalay has its name; the falling cadence of the lovely word has gathered about itself the chiaroscuro of romance."

"There is no silence in the East."

"The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes..."

"...when you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right..."

"It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer."

"...you know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism."

"Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all."

"Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job."

"It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it."

"Both these men are in love with Natasha, Count Rostov's younger daughter, and in her Tolstoy has created the most delightful girl in fiction. Nothing is so difficult as to portray a young girl who is at once charming and interesting. Generally the young girls of fiction are colorless (Amelia in Vanity Fair), priggish (Fanny in Mansfield Park), too clever by half (Constantia Durham in The Egoist), or little geese (Dora in David Copperfield), silly flirts or innocent beyound belief. It is understandable that they should be an awkward subject for the novelist to deal with, for at that tender age the personality is undeveloped. Similarly a painter can only make a face interesting when the vicissitudes of life, thought, love and suffering have given it character. In the portrait of a girl the best he can do is to represent the charm and beauty of youth. But Natasha is entirely natural. She is sweet, sensitive, and sympathetic, willful, childish, womanly already, idealistic, quick-tempered, warm-hearted, headstrong, capricious and in everything enchanting. Tolstoy created many women and they are wonderfully true to life, but never another who wins the affection of the reader as does Natasha."

"Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a little nearer to inevitable death."

"Men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel."

"Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history."

"He made one laugh sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which gains its force only by its unusualness; it would cease to amuse if it were commonly practised."

"But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions."

"Self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy."

"Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem."

"“A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,” he said, “but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”"

"The writer is more concerned to know than to judge."

"We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us."

"One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly."

"I am a little shy of any assumption of moral indignation. There is always in it an element of self-satisfaction which makes it awkward to anyone who has a sense of humour."

"The poignancy which all beauty has."

"Life isn't long enough for love and art."

"I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present."

"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

"She was making money. But she could not get over the idea that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined to remind you that she was a lady by birth."

"Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed. She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress."

"Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation."

"I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, or how much goodness in the reprobate."

"I did not then know the besetting sin of woman, the passion to discuss her private affairs with anyone who is willing to listen."

"I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to ‘take in’, that civilized man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life."

"Impropriety is the soul of wit."

"I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed."

"The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away."

"It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."

"He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it."