One of the greatest skills of Leo Tolstoy is that he manages to show his reader the significance of perception in our daily lives. He shows us how at some moment in time something can seem important and desirable and just a few moments later that same object or person can be experienced as frivolous or how the same person can be considered ugly by somebody because her features are unattractive according to social standard and yet she might be perceived as beautiful by another for as little as a spark in her eyes and an unaccounted graciousness. In War and Peace, Tolstoy presents Princess Marya as a rich but physically unattractive heiress. “At this point, Princess Marya sighed and looked around at the tall mirror to her right. The glass reflected a feeble, unattractive body and a skinny face. The ever-gloomy eyes looked at themselves more hopelessly than ever.” Her only beautiful feature were her eyes which at certain moments could spark with great charm, “her eyes were large, deep, radiant (sometimes a warm light seemed to pour out of them), really so winsome that very often, in spite of the plainness of her face as a whole, her eyes held a greater appeal than mere beauty.”