My mother was the source of Tolstoi's greatest happiness, and the real author of his greatness. If there is sometimes ground for thinking, while read… - Lev Lvovich Tolstoy

We had in the Tolstoi family a special dance, which everybody danced with joy when wearisome visitors at last drove off from the house. This was known as the Numidian dance, and it had something African and very wild about it. My father, who was generally the first to lead off, at such times sprang forward, the right hand raised above his head, and began to hop, skip and run around the long table. My mother, in her turn, followed by our tutors, governesses and all the children, launched themselves at the same movement round the table, and when it had been frantically circled several times, everybody stopped, satisfied, and sighed with relief.

Schopenhauer's ideas on women, on pain, and on freedom of conscience were always completely shared by my father. "When one suffers," said Schopenhauer, "one has the consolation of knowing that the sufferings of others may be greater than one's own." Tolstoi loved to repeat this thought, though I must confess that for me it meant nothing. To my mind, on the contrary, one may suffer still more when one has the knowledge that others are suffering also.

Those who have read this book [War and Peace] will remember how the great heart of the author sought, even in the past of his people, the eternal secret of love. In Anna Karenina we find, already distinctly set forth in the personality of Levine, the aspirations of Tolstoi himself, which become more and more conscious and defined. The criticism of modern society, and all its institutions, its science and its literature; the tendency towards the simple and natural life of the people, original and novel ideas in regard to religion—all this is beginning, in the book in question, to take in the heart and brain of the writer a more or less precise form.