Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's flattering me, " thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous (sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression. Leo Tolstoy
About This Quote

This is the story of a friendship. The princess sees herself in the mirror and is not happy with what she sees. She then sees her friend and feels better. The two friends spend hours together and just being there makes them both happier.

At one point, the princess realizes that she is thinking positively about herself when she should be thinking negatively. She then asks her friend to tell her how to change the way she looks at herself. Her friend tells her that she should be positive no matter what she looks like, and her friend sees this change in her friend's expression when she looks in the mirror.

Source: War And Peace

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More Quotes By Leo Tolstoy
  1. I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
  2. Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.
  3. Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}
  4. I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.
  5. They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.
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