The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake — especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.
It’s easier to part with a man than with illusions about him.
I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious – your heart, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings. <...> But the more difficult the labour and hardship, the higher the reward.
Count Leo Tolstoi to Valeria Arseneva, his fiance. November 2, 1856
My brother once told me that nothing someone says before the word "but" really counts.