Leo Tolstoy trans. Rosemary Edmonds, Anna Karenina, part 7, chapter 31.

The candle by which she had been reading the book filled with trouble and deceit, sorrow and evil, flared up with a brighter light, illuminating for her everything that before had been enshrouded in darkness, flickered, grew dim, and went out forever.

— Leo Tolstoy on Candles

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The candle by which she had been reading the book filled with trouble and deceit, sorrow and evil, flared up with a brighter light, illuminating for her everything that before had been enshrouded in darkness, flickered, grew dim, and went out forever." in the context of "Leo Tolstoy trans. Rosemary Edmonds, Anna Karenina, part 7, chapter 31." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Candles" (Quotes: Alphabetized by author ) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Leo Tolstoy

About Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.