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

More from Leo Tolstoy

• And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so undeveloped that you can’t see all that you can do, or you won’t sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.
• She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.
• A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
• Accept loss forever
• A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
• A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.