“Now, you young people, you ought to make that your rule! No one can be such a friend as one’s wife, a real friend. In marriage it is either paradise, or simple hell; there is no ‘purgatory.’”
Boulanger said that generally it was a case of purgatory.
Tolstoi thought for a time and then said with a sigh:
“Yes, perhaps, unfortunately.” ...
That same evening, looking at Andrey Lvovich’s little girl, Sonechka, playing on the floor, Tolstoi said:
“Faust speaks of the rare moment of which one can say: ‘Verweile doch, du bist so schön!’ Now there it is, that moment!” (Tolstoi pointed to the little girl.) “There is a perfectly happy, pure, and innocent moment.”
June 20th. Some time ago, in May, Tolstoi said:
“Religions are usually based on one of these three principles: on sentiment, reason, or illusion. Stoicism is an example of the religion of reason; Mormonism of illusion; Muhammadanism of sentiment. I have lately received many letters from Muhammadans. I had a letter from Cairo from a representative of the Baptist sect, it is an example of the religion of sentiment. I also had a letter from India, written by a wonderful and very religious man. He writes that true Muhammadanism is a perfectly different thing from what people usually think it to be. Indeed, I know some very religious Moslems. And how movingly simple and lofty is their worship!”
To-day at sunset we walked in the garden. We talked of Gorky and his feeble “Man.” Tolstoi was saying that to-day on his walk he met on the road (he likes to go out on to the road, and sit down on a little stone, a milestone, and to observe or to speak to the passers-by) a man who turned out to be a rather well-educated working-man.
Tolstoi said: