Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Leo Tolstoy, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Leo Tolstoy quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1496 Leo Tolstoy quotes for you to read and share.
If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself -- Leo Tolstoy
The mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, it is he who is dead and not I. -- Leo Tolstoy
There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences. -- Leo Tolstoy
Pierre's insanity consisted in the face that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them. -- Leo Tolstoy
I say that the God who created the world in six days and who sent His son, and also his son himself, are not God, but that God is the one existing, incomparable good, the beginning of everything. -- Leo Tolstoy
The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall always live, I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity. -- Leo Tolstoy
But instead of all that, here he was - the rich husband of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, who liked to eat, drink, and, unbuttoning himself, to denounce the government a little, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universally beloved member of Moscow society. -- Leo Tolstoy
If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live -- Leo Tolstoy
Spring, love, happiness! Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! -- Leo Tolstoy
Often seeing the success she had with young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not love her. -- Leo Tolstoy
We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. -- Leo Tolstoy
He was not thinking that the Christian law which he had wanted to follow all his life prescribed that he forgive and love his enemies; but the joyful feeling of love and forgiveness of his enemies filled his soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox. -- Leo Tolstoy
What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love -- Leo Tolstoy
God knows of love -- Leo Tolstoy
Love is a priceless gift. This is the only thing we can give and yet - it is all you have left... -- Leo Tolstoy
Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government. -- Leo Tolstoy
I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?' - said her charming, pathetic, dead face. -- Leo Tolstoy
We must live. We must love. And we must believe that there's more to it all than our lives on this scrap of earth. -- Leo Tolstoy
The greatest human achievement is love. -- Leo Tolstoy
How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much! -- Leo Tolstoy
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge - were all respected. -- Leo Tolstoy
The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy, and His love of man. -- Leo Tolstoy
The hero of my tale," Tolstoy wrote when he was just twenty-seven, "whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and always will be beautiful - is Truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my life?
Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman? -- Leo Tolstoy
The heroine of my writings is She, whom I love with all the forces of my being, She who always was, is and will be beautiful, is Truth -- Leo Tolstoy
In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when this love has reached its zenith - a moment when it is unconscious, unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. -- Leo Tolstoy
Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now his passion was even doing battle with his love -- Leo Tolstoy
Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. Another's wife is a swan, but one's own is bitter wormwood. -- Leo Tolstoy
All men love live not by what they may intend for their own well-being, but by the love that dwells in others. -- Leo Tolstoy
When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. -- Leo Tolstoy
If you could forget and forgive what happened."
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, "I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you. -- Leo Tolstoy
Love them that hate you, but you can't love those you hate. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed. -- Leo Tolstoy
For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in these days?" said the ambassador's wife.
"What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up still," said Vronsky. -- Leo Tolstoy
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. -- Leo Tolstoy
The meaning of life consists in the love and service of God. -- Leo Tolstoy
We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that. -- Leo Tolstoy
When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust - but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation. -- Leo Tolstoy
He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women. -- Leo Tolstoy
Human love serves to love those dear to us but to love one's enemies we need divine love. -- Leo Tolstoy
I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it. -- Leo Tolstoy
I am too proud to ever allow myself to care for a man who does not love me -- Leo Tolstoy
Where there is love, there is God also. -- Leo Tolstoy
By patriotism is meant, not only spontaneous, instinctive love for one's own nation, and preference for it above all other nations, but also the belief that such love and preference are good and useful. -- Leo Tolstoy
He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [ ... ] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around. -- Leo Tolstoy
It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary. -- Leo Tolstoy
All over?' he repeated. 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love! -- Leo Tolstoy
The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. -- Leo Tolstoy
It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it, -- Leo Tolstoy
I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy. -- Leo Tolstoy
And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people. -- Leo Tolstoy
Then she thought of how life could still be happy, and how tormentingly she loved and hated him, and how terribly her heart was pounding. -- Leo Tolstoy
Love those you hate you. -- Leo Tolstoy
I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off. -- Leo Tolstoy
Commit no act that is contrary to love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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. -- Leo Tolstoy
Don't steal sweet rolls. -- Leo Tolstoy
I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my wife. -- Leo Tolstoy
Love alone is the only reasonable activity or pursuit of humankind ... Fo r Love not only annihilates our fear of meaninglessness but empowers us to seek the happiness of others. And this indeed is our greatest happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
But what desires can always be satisfied despite external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.' He -- Leo Tolstoy
I don't count life as life without love -- Leo Tolstoy
One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees ... -- Leo Tolstoy
No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love HER. -- Leo Tolstoy
It's hard to love a woman and do anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
Love ... " she repeated slowly, in a musing voice, and suddenly, while disentangling the lace, she added: "The reason I dislike this word because it means such a great deal to me, far more than you can understand. -- Leo Tolstoy
He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it -- Leo Tolstoy
Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it. -- Leo Tolstoy
There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I admit, but ... -- Leo Tolstoy
To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings. -- Leo Tolstoy
But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. -- Leo Tolstoy
He was nine years old; he was a child; he he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty. -- Leo Tolstoy
Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs, a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. "And why did I come here?" he wondered. -- Leo Tolstoy
I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices," Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't live with him. Do you understand? -- Leo Tolstoy
If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace. -- Leo Tolstoy
And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love" ... -- Leo Tolstoy
I love everybody and pity everybody. -- Leo Tolstoy
That in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love. -- Leo Tolstoy
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. -- Leo Tolstoy
The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not understand," rejoined the lady, "is that only love consecrates marriage, and that the real marriage is that which is consecrated by love. -- Leo Tolstoy
In marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself. -- Leo Tolstoy
The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations. -- Leo Tolstoy
The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations. If -- Leo Tolstoy
Everything I know, I know because of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here. -- Leo Tolstoy
He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity -- Leo Tolstoy
To love life is to love God. -- Leo Tolstoy
To say that you can love one person all your life is just like saying that one candle will continue burning as long as you live. -- Leo Tolstoy
He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
What time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life? -- Leo Tolstoy
Oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem? -- Leo Tolstoy
He wants to prove to me that his love for me must not interfere with his freedom -- Leo Tolstoy
The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. -- Leo Tolstoy
People are always happy where there is love, because their happiness in in themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger - yes, a complete stranger! With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself - stranger. -- Leo Tolstoy
When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor. -- Leo Tolstoy
So remember: great achievements take time, there is no overnight success. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist. -- Leo Tolstoy
It is beyond the power of the human intellect to encompass all the causes of any phenomenon. But the impulse to search into causes is inherent in man's very nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
Enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in finding it -- Leo Tolstoy
All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. -- Leo Tolstoy
My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying. -- Leo Tolstoy
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. -- Leo Tolstoy
But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then - all the combinations made - they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures. -- Leo Tolstoy
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling. -- Leo Tolstoy
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? -- Leo Tolstoy
Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn. -- Leo Tolstoy
Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain. -- Leo Tolstoy
Often a man goes on for years imaging that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him. -- Leo Tolstoy
Ah, don't grieve, little falcon,' he said with that tenderly melodious gentleness with which old Russian women speak. 'Don't grieve, little friend: you suffer an hour, you live an age! So it is, my dear. And we live here, thank God, with no offense. There's bad people, and there's good -- Leo Tolstoy
People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense. -- Leo Tolstoy
With no doubt Al Hussain was one of the greatest rebels, for correcting the path of rulers who deviated from the right path. He, by his stance honorably acquired martyrdom martyrdom that free people wish to acquire. -- Leo Tolstoy
Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. -- Leo Tolstoy
Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an ague. -- Leo Tolstoy
But his voice was broken, his face pale, -- Leo Tolstoy
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking ... -- Leo Tolstoy
[looked at other peoples lives and said,] 'How can one let it come to that? How can one not undo this ugly situation?' But now, when the disaster had fallen on his head, he not only did not think of how to undo the situation, but did not want to know about it at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
While they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. -- Leo Tolstoy
What, indeed, had I done in all my thirty years of conscious life? Not only had I failed to live my life for the sake of all, but I had not even lived it for myself. I had lived as a parasite, and once I asked myself why I had lived, the answer I received was: for nothing. -- Leo Tolstoy
At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even -- Leo Tolstoy
Man recognizes that he will not die, only when he recognizes that he was never born, but always has been, is, and will be. -- Leo Tolstoy
Conceit is incompatible with understanding. -- Leo Tolstoy
If you're not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job. -- Leo Tolstoy
That's the way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf,' he muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him. -- Leo Tolstoy
Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God spare her that. -- Leo Tolstoy
Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad. -- Leo Tolstoy
How can one feel well when one is suffering in moral sense? Can any sensitive person find peace of mind nowadays? -- Leo Tolstoy
Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond. -- Leo Tolstoy
Only those live who do good. -- Leo Tolstoy
Oblonsy was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you're going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop short at Prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor - the ape? -- Leo Tolstoy
We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated. -- Leo Tolstoy
Let me lie down, Lord, like a stone; let me rise up like new bread. -- Leo Tolstoy
Decision it was only necessary for him to concentrate his attention for a few moments and the spirit moved him, and the best possible decision presented itself as though an inner voice had told him what to do. -- Leo Tolstoy
Condemn me if you choose I do that myself, but condemn me , and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. -- Leo Tolstoy
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And -- Leo Tolstoy
It was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two Jews, and all these people, though the way had been paved already with them, Stepan Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg. -- Leo Tolstoy
But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false. -- Leo Tolstoy
The political is not compatible with the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, has to be one-sided. -- Leo Tolstoy
Ferreting in one's soul, one often ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed. -- Leo Tolstoy
Women have made of themselves such a weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old man, cannot remain tranquil in their presence. Watch a popular festival, or our receptions or ball-rooms. Woman well knows her influence there. You will see it in her triumphant smiles. -- Leo Tolstoy
Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. -- Leo Tolstoy
Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything remained the same and there was no cessation. And the inevitable end of it all became more and more terrible. "Yes, -- Leo Tolstoy
Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow. -- Leo Tolstoy
Just imagine that the purpose of life is happinesss only-
then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing.You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity,your intellect and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world.Then life becomes a joy -- Leo Tolstoy
As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart. -- Leo Tolstoy
And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death
but it's more peaceful. -- Leo Tolstoy
Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective,
of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and
therefore art is the highest means of knowledge. -- Leo Tolstoy
Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: the gift of seeing what others have not seen. -- Leo Tolstoy
If it were not so frightening it would be amusing to observe the pride and complacency with which we, like children, take apart the watch, pull out the spring and make a toy of it, and are then surprised when the watch stops working. -- Leo Tolstoy
And yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true. Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He -- Leo Tolstoy
- Every girl is proud of an offer
- Yes, every girl, but not she -- Leo Tolstoy
One must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy! -- Leo Tolstoy
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. -- Leo Tolstoy
A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ... its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing. -- Leo Tolstoy
Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses. -- Leo Tolstoy
What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues-innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection-are our sole objects of pursuit? -- Leo Tolstoy
You know I can't stand Shakespeare's plays, but yours are even worse. -- Leo Tolstoy
A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them. -- Leo Tolstoy
Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime. -- Leo Tolstoy
Marveling at this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him. -- Leo Tolstoy
I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans start being accurate there's no end to it! -- Leo Tolstoy
There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead. -- Leo Tolstoy
There are such repulsive faces in the world. -- Leo Tolstoy
As long as there is life, there is still happiness -- Leo Tolstoy
It is dreadful that one cannot tear the past out by the roots. -- Leo Tolstoy
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Read more at -- Leo Tolstoy
No, you're going in vain," she mentally addressed a company in a coach-and-four who were evidently going out of town for some merriment. "And the dog you're taking with you won't help you. You won't get away from yourselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion ... peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means - by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspections ... It should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. -- Leo Tolstoy
I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. -- Leo Tolstoy
The dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully. -- Leo Tolstoy
When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely. -- Leo Tolstoy
After the dark starry night came a bright, cheerful morning. The snow melted in the sun, the horses galloped swiftly, and to right and left alike passed new and various forests, fields, villages. -- Leo Tolstoy
Everyone had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire. -- Leo Tolstoy
At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future. -- Leo Tolstoy
Where there has been true science, art has always been its exponent. -- Leo Tolstoy
There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
The superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation ... is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation. p 1209 -- Leo Tolstoy
The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's highest happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible. Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree! -- Leo Tolstoy
He spoke that refined French in which our grandparents not only spoke bit thought ... -- Leo Tolstoy
The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions. -- Leo Tolstoy
I would not take a young man to a lock-hospital to knock the hankering after women out of him, but into my soul to see the devils that were rending it. -- Leo Tolstoy
He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. -- Leo Tolstoy
For the artist treating of man's relation to all sides of life there cannot and should not be heroes, but there should be men. -- Leo Tolstoy
I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand -- Leo Tolstoy
If you want to be happy, be happy. -- Leo Tolstoy
I have lived through much and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet, secluded life in the country with possibility of being useful to people. -- Leo Tolstoy
When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the Rostovs' box - her whole bosom completely exposed - beckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box, began talking to him with an amiable smile. -- Leo Tolstoy
There is only one way to put an end to evil, and that is to do good for evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
Book is a nice companion -- Leo Tolstoy
I developed a pathological pride and the insane conviction that it was my mission to teach people without knowing what I was teaching them. -- Leo Tolstoy
The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live. -- Leo Tolstoy
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. -- Leo Tolstoy
Nothing does harm if one's mind is at peace. -- Leo Tolstoy
Everything is indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be destroyed by any force. - MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO -- Leo Tolstoy
I now understand that my welfare is only possible if I acknowledge my unity with all the people of the world without exception. -- Leo Tolstoy
He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. -- Leo Tolstoy
Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life. -- Leo Tolstoy
There were no other eyes in the world like them. In the whole world there was only one being able to unite in itself the universe and the meaning of life for him. -- Leo Tolstoy
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. -- Leo Tolstoy
Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people. -- Leo Tolstoy
For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all. -- Leo Tolstoy
My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons ... -- Leo Tolstoy
Rostov went on ahead to fulfil the request, and to his great surprise learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and brothers. -- Leo Tolstoy
In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning. -- Leo Tolstoy
Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky's greatest friend in the regiment. -- Leo Tolstoy
Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. -- Leo Tolstoy
The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. -- Leo Tolstoy
Moses gave us a law, but we received the true faith through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God or will ever see God, only his son, who is in the Father, has shown us the path of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man whom while calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Aleksey Aleksandrovich had lived. -- Leo Tolstoy
such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class - the military. -- Leo Tolstoy
He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who, quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan. -- Leo Tolstoy
Till now I have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them. -- Leo Tolstoy
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw. -- Leo Tolstoy
Much unhappiness has come from things left unsaid -- Leo Tolstoy
A man has to think of his soul before everything else. -- Leo Tolstoy
A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better; and therefore, those who wish to improve life must direct all their efforts towards changing both their own and other people's consciousness. -- Leo Tolstoy
Act as if you are, and you will become such. -- Leo Tolstoy
I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed. -- Leo Tolstoy
For an instant he was offended, but immediately knew he could not be offended with her because she was himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
The one thing necessary in life, as in art is to tell the truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. -- Leo Tolstoy
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. -- Leo Tolstoy
Beautiful as seemed mama's face, it became more lovely when she smiled and seemed to enliven everything about her. -- Leo Tolstoy
I've got four sons in the army, but I'm not crying about it. It's all in God's hands: you may die in your bed, or God may spare you in battle, -- Leo Tolstoy
I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes. -- Leo Tolstoy
Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this? -- Leo Tolstoy
Every happy family is happy in the same way. Every unhappy family is unhappy in different ways. -- Leo Tolstoy
I must ask what it is you want of me?"
"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over. -- Leo Tolstoy
He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires. -- Leo Tolstoy
Levin tried to drink a little coffee, and put a piece of roll into his mouth, but his mouth could do nothing with it. He took the piece out of his mouth, put on his overcoat and went out to walk about again. -- Leo Tolstoy
Prayer is addressed to the personal God, not because he is personal indeed, I know for certain that he is not personal, because personality is limitation, while God is unlimited. -- Leo Tolstoy
You are in despair, because you wish to live for your own happiness. -- Leo Tolstoy
The same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?" ... p982 -- Leo Tolstoy
Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly. -- Leo Tolstoy
And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either. -- Leo Tolstoy
As the sun and each atom of ether is a shphere complete in itself, yet at the same time only a part of a whole too vast for man to comprehend, so each individual bears within himself his own purpose, yet bears it ot serve a general purpose unfathomable to man. -- Leo Tolstoy
Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars -- Leo Tolstoy
Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh exposed (making a show of that very flesh which in his own case caused so much suffering), strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with illness, suffering, and death, because they interfered with her happiness. Fyodor -- Leo Tolstoy
Now I say that I know the meaning of my life:"To live for God, for my soul." And this meaning, in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvelous. Such, indeed, is the meaning of everything existing.(12-7) -- Leo Tolstoy
It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it. -- Leo Tolstoy
The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God. -- Leo Tolstoy
I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now.
Vronsky -- Leo Tolstoy
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad. -- Leo Tolstoy
A man who does not understand the benefit of suffering does not live a clever and true life. -- Leo Tolstoy
He had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was -- Leo Tolstoy
There are men who call land theirs, yet have never set eyes on that land and have never trodden it. There are men who call other men theirs, but yet have never set eyes on the other men, and their sole relation to those other men consists of doing them evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
I only know this, that she thanks God for all her tribulations, and, above all, because her husband is dead. -- Leo Tolstoy
Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done? -- Leo Tolstoy
Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something. -- Leo Tolstoy
I wrote: teaching what was for me the only truth, namely, that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one's family. -- Leo Tolstoy
Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It's all vanity, it's all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. -- Leo Tolstoy
Only by assuming an infinitesimally small unit for observation - a differential of history (that is, the common tendencies of men) - and arriving at the art of integration (finding the sum of the infinitesimals) can we hope to discover the laws of history. -- Leo Tolstoy
The worker picked up Pakhom's spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs. -- Leo Tolstoy
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. -- Leo Tolstoy
Man is created for happiness, that happiness lies in himself, in the satisfaction of simple human needs; and that all unhappiness is due, not to privation but to superfluity. -- Leo Tolstoy
In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete discord between the spouses or loving harmony. But when the relations between spouses are uncertain and there is neither the one nor the other, nothing can be undertaken. -- Leo Tolstoy
There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness -- Leo Tolstoy
Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing. -- Leo Tolstoy
In reality I was ever revolving round one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach without knowing what to teach. -- Leo Tolstoy
I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world. -- Leo Tolstoy
To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral. -- Leo Tolstoy
We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. -- Leo Tolstoy
For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, misfortune his own fault. -- Leo Tolstoy
To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. -- Leo Tolstoy
It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. -- Leo Tolstoy
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong! -- Leo Tolstoy
What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course. -- Leo Tolstoy
-Why are you so sad?
- Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings. -- Leo Tolstoy
A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep. -- Leo Tolstoy
It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading. -- Leo Tolstoy
A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every heart has its own skeletons. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say. -- Leo Tolstoy
Each of us has his skeletons in his soul, as the English say. -- Leo Tolstoy
Everything within him and around him seemed confused, senseless, and loathsome. But in this very loathing for everything around him, Pierre took a sort of irritating pleasure. -- Leo Tolstoy
Life seemed to Prince Andrey a series of senseless phenomena following one another without any connection. -- Leo Tolstoy
He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round. -- Leo Tolstoy
Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it ... -- Leo Tolstoy
He regarded his whole life as a continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him. -- Leo Tolstoy
Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her from being happy. -- Leo Tolstoy
The most important person is the one you are with in this moment. -- Leo Tolstoy
The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed within me, and I began to live once again. -- Leo Tolstoy
There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before ... -- Leo Tolstoy
And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat. -- Leo Tolstoy
If you want to be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right; but I'm going all the same. -- Leo Tolstoy
She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters. -- Leo Tolstoy
For a long time afterwards, in prison, when moral change took place in me, I thought of that moment, recalled what I could of it, and considered it. I remembered for an instant, before the action I had a terrible consciousness I was killing a defenseless woman, my wife! -- Leo Tolstoy
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head. -- Leo Tolstoy
Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile. -- Leo Tolstoy
For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite. -- Leo Tolstoy
Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it. His -- Leo Tolstoy
I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over. -- Leo Tolstoy
Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over. -- Leo Tolstoy
And Anatole, with the partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to Dolokhov a hundred times. -- Leo Tolstoy
But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy -- Leo Tolstoy
Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom. -- Leo Tolstoy
She still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
Benefit performances, bad paintings and statues, philanthropic societies, Gypsies, schools, subscription dinners, carousing, the Masons, churches, books - no one and nothing met with refusal, -- Leo Tolstoy
When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant! ... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death -- Leo Tolstoy
War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. -- Leo Tolstoy
Were possible for a man to discover a mode of existence in which he could feel that, though idle, he was of use to the world and fulfilling his duty, -- Leo Tolstoy
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky - Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world - woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. -- Leo Tolstoy
Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilities: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man. -- Leo Tolstoy
Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a genius -- Leo Tolstoy
Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more! -- Leo Tolstoy
She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having an object for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. -- Leo Tolstoy
What is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. -- Leo Tolstoy
Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live -- Leo Tolstoy
If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. -- Leo Tolstoy
If once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be left! -- Leo Tolstoy
If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! -- Leo Tolstoy
In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me. -- Leo Tolstoy
She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments. -- Leo Tolstoy
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety. -- Leo Tolstoy
Life is fragile and absurd. -- Leo Tolstoy
He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. -- Leo Tolstoy
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of forgiveness. 'All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much. -- Leo Tolstoy
It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man,
to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget ... -- Leo Tolstoy
There's a way out of every situation. -- Leo Tolstoy
Throughout the performance Levin felt like a deaf person watching a dance. He was quite perplexed when the music stopped and felt very tired as a result of strained attention quite unrewarded. -- Leo Tolstoy
I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't, -- Leo Tolstoy
As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from me ... And now the work's done, there's only death. -- Leo Tolstoy
Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snow drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were. -- Leo Tolstoy
There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it. -- Leo Tolstoy
He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women. -- Leo Tolstoy
But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
he recovered. -- Leo Tolstoy
There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
If a man has the will he can learn anything. -- Leo Tolstoy
As a man cannot lift a mountain, and as a kindly man cannot kill an infant, so a man living the Christian life cannot take part in deeds of violence. Of what value then to him are arguments about the imaginary advantages of doing what is morally impossible for him to do? -- Leo Tolstoy
Only when Prince Andrei was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He -- Leo Tolstoy
You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so ... yes, love! ... -- Leo Tolstoy
Three hundred persons took their seats in the dining-room, according to their rank and importance: the more important nearer to the honoured guest, as naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest. -- Leo Tolstoy
The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind. -- Leo Tolstoy
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man. -- Leo Tolstoy
A desire of desires: the melancholy. -- Leo Tolstoy
The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men , but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity. -- Leo Tolstoy
Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it - equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press - and only for that reason did he obtain power. -- Leo Tolstoy
We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. -- Leo Tolstoy
We all think we only have to be knocked a little bit off course and we've lost everything, but it's only the start of something new and good. Where there is life, there is happiness. There -- Leo Tolstoy
There can be only one permanent revolution- a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man. -- Leo Tolstoy
The idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful life. -- Leo Tolstoy
It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced that no religion is no longer needed. -- Leo Tolstoy
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. -- Leo Tolstoy
In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not to obey, but to enforce obedience. And a government is only a government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its power. -- Leo Tolstoy
No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be able to leave it. -- Leo Tolstoy
There is, and can be, no cause of a historical event except the one cause of all causes. But -- Leo Tolstoy
We shall have to stay the night here,' he said, as if preparing to spend the night at an inn, and he proceeded to unfasten the collar-straps. The buckles came undone.
'But shan't we be frozen?' remarked Vasili Andreevich.
'Well, if we are we can't help it.' said Nikita. -- Leo Tolstoy
All art has this characteristic-it unites people. -- Leo Tolstoy
My tongue is my enemy. Brothers -- Leo Tolstoy
Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power. -- Leo Tolstoy
He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health. -- Leo Tolstoy
Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful, white, ring-adorned hands and began to demonstrate. She obviously could see that her explanation could not make anything understood, but, knowing that her speech was pleasant and her hands were beautiful, she went on explaining. -- Leo Tolstoy
Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows. -- Leo Tolstoy
The egoist feels lonely, surrounded by threatening and alien events; all his desires are sunk in his own concerns. A kind person lives in a world of beneficent events, whose goodness matches his own. - ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER -- Leo Tolstoy
The further one goes, the better the land seems. -- Leo Tolstoy
The legislation of Quran will spread all over the world, because it agrees with the mind, logic and wisdom. -- Leo Tolstoy
Woman is deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such ages back that we are often unwilling to recognise the gulf that separates them from us. -- Leo Tolstoy
Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. -- Leo Tolstoy
All that day she felt as if she were acting in a theatre with better actors than herself, and that her bad performance was spoiling the whole affair. -- Leo Tolstoy
Knowledge is limitless. Therefore, there is a minuscule difference between those who know a lot and those who know very little. -- Leo Tolstoy
Kings are the slaves of history. -- Leo Tolstoy
He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible. -- Leo Tolstoy
If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals. -- Leo Tolstoy
Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.'
'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll. -- Leo Tolstoy
False. Everything by which you have lived and live now is all a deception, a lie, concealing both life and death from you. -- Leo Tolstoy
No, life is not over at thirty-one! Prince Andrei suddenly decided finally and decisively. -- Leo Tolstoy
Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized if it is to last. Prince -- Leo Tolstoy
Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made (Latin). -- Leo Tolstoy
And the dog you're taking with you will be no help to you. You can't get away from yourselves. -- Leo Tolstoy
The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed, she is so kind hearted that she can't look at the blood, but enjoys serving the calf up with sauce -- Leo Tolstoy
Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it. -- Leo Tolstoy
He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. -- Leo Tolstoy
So you make a sacrifice!' he threw special emphasis on the last word. 'Well, so do I. What could be better? We complete in generosity
what an example of family happiness! -- Leo Tolstoy
The men of this party had both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. -- Leo Tolstoy
In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful. -- Leo Tolstoy
I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change. -- Leo Tolstoy
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history. -- Leo Tolstoy
The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive. -- Leo Tolstoy
Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven -- Leo Tolstoy
Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. -- Leo Tolstoy
when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained. -- Leo Tolstoy
Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. -- Leo Tolstoy
I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor. -- Leo Tolstoy
He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light. -- Leo Tolstoy
Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade. -- Leo Tolstoy
If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love. -- Leo Tolstoy
A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence. -- Leo Tolstoy
How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ... All will end in death, all! -- Leo Tolstoy
Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life ... within a given age in a given society ... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal ... they are good; if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad. -- Leo Tolstoy
Conversation sprang up as to the elegance and realism of her acting -- the sort of conversation that is always repeated and is always the same. In the midst of the conversation Fedor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilych and became silent. The others also looked at him and grew silent. Ivan -- Leo Tolstoy
Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise."
"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I ... -- Leo Tolstoy
In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life ... Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people. -- Leo Tolstoy
If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people. -- Leo Tolstoy
She was so plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty. -- Leo Tolstoy
The sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. -- Leo Tolstoy
Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered. -- Leo Tolstoy
War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and not make a game of it ... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. -- Leo Tolstoy
The best solution is to be kind and good while ignoring the opinions of others. -- Leo Tolstoy
One of the most obtuse superstitions is the superstition of the scientists who say that man can exist without faith. -- Leo Tolstoy
If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place, settled down, and laid to rest. -- Leo Tolstoy
Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude. -- Leo Tolstoy
PART TWO I IN October 1805 the Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau -- Leo Tolstoy
Do not be interested in the quantity of people who respect and admire you, but in their quality. If bad people dislike you, so much the better. - LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA -- Leo Tolstoy
HISTORY IS the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible. -- Leo Tolstoy
I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master. -- Leo Tolstoy
That's how it always is," Koznyshev interrupted him. "We Russians are always like that. Perhaps it's one of our good national characteristics. I mean this faculty of seeing our own shortcomings. But we overdo it. We comfort ourselves with ironic remarks which are always on the tip of the tongue. -- Leo Tolstoy
Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One should never overdo -- Leo Tolstoy
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent. -- Leo Tolstoy
A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated. -- Leo Tolstoy
In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart. -- Leo Tolstoy
Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to thy loving kindness. -- Leo Tolstoy
The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life. -- Leo Tolstoy
And whatever people might say about the time having come when young people must arrange their future for themselves, she could not believe it any more than she could believe that loaded pistols could ever be the best toys for five-year-old children. -- Leo Tolstoy
And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe that in anyone's time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols. -- Leo Tolstoy
Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly pure. -- Leo Tolstoy
Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on. -- Leo Tolstoy
The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless. -- Leo Tolstoy
There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. -- Leo Tolstoy
We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do? -- Leo Tolstoy
It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God. -- Leo Tolstoy
The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? -- Leo Tolstoy
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness. -- Leo Tolstoy
I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people, - that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality. -- Leo Tolstoy
The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the impossibility of such a reconciliation. -- Leo Tolstoy
By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings. -- Leo Tolstoy
Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death. -- Leo Tolstoy
Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept? -- Leo Tolstoy
All such questions as, for instance,of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient belief, etc.
questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine are not, and cannot be solved for ages
received full, unhesitating solution. -- Leo Tolstoy
If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience. -- Leo Tolstoy
The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity. -- Leo Tolstoy
He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort. "Yes, -- Leo Tolstoy
[T]he social relationship of young women to young men ... now seemed to Kitty like ignominious exposure of merchandise to be taken by the highest bidder. -- Leo Tolstoy
To know God and to live is the same thing. God is Life. -- Leo Tolstoy
Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up! -- Leo Tolstoy
A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body. -- Leo Tolstoy
Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible. -- Leo Tolstoy
What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation? ... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator? -- Leo Tolstoy
He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly -- Leo Tolstoy
He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. -- Leo Tolstoy
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. -- Leo Tolstoy
But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational. -- Leo Tolstoy
Boredom: the desire for desires. -- Leo Tolstoy
It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. -- Leo Tolstoy
The only purpose of education is freedom; the only method is experience. -- Leo Tolstoy
A moment's pain can be a lifetime's gain. -- Leo Tolstoy
That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene,
good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it's only that I'm not caught
enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope. -- Leo Tolstoy
Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy? -- Leo Tolstoy
Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All he knew was that at such times it is always safe to cross oneself. But -- Leo Tolstoy
At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in chief. -- Leo Tolstoy
They haven't an idea what happiness is; they don't know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness - no life at all -- Leo Tolstoy
'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai. -- Leo Tolstoy
Let others be afraid, but the soul is not afraid of anything. It lives according to its own laws. It is bigger than space and older than time. It gives courage against all the misfortunes of life. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON -- Leo Tolstoy
You wait a bit, wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and touching his hand. "I've told you what I know, and I repeat that in this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor. -- Leo Tolstoy
Vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism. -- Leo Tolstoy
The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. -- Leo Tolstoy
Cor, what a godawful stink!" That was all that remained of this man in the land of the living. -- Leo Tolstoy
The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life. -- Leo Tolstoy
For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. -- Leo Tolstoy
The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint. -- Leo Tolstoy
I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine. -- Leo Tolstoy
How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her. -- Leo Tolstoy
God gave the day, God gave the strength. -- Leo Tolstoy
He was convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in society. He -- Leo Tolstoy
All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom. -- Leo Tolstoy
WAR AND PEACE EPILOGUE -- Leo Tolstoy
I threw it away feeling sorry to have vainly destroyed a flower that looked beautiful in its proper place. How many different plant lives man destroys to support his own existence. -- Leo Tolstoy
The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher. -- Leo Tolstoy
One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love. -- Leo Tolstoy
To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege. -- Leo Tolstoy
A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life. -- Leo Tolstoy
We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom -- Leo Tolstoy
Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence. -- Leo Tolstoy
Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul. -- Leo Tolstoy
The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it. -- Leo Tolstoy
Dear Lord, what a madhouse the world is! -- Leo Tolstoy
In order to know what he is, a man must first know what the sum of this mysterious humanity is, a humanity made up of people who, like himself, do not understand what they are. -- Leo Tolstoy
One need only admit the premise that public peace of mind is in danger and any action finds justification. All the horrors of the Reign of Terror in France were based entirely on solicitude for public tranquillity. -- Leo Tolstoy
One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification. All -- Leo Tolstoy
Life and death are in God's hands -- Leo Tolstoy
Thus ran his thoughts; he wanted to go to bed, but he felt loath to tear himself away from the book. -- Leo Tolstoy
With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through with it. -- Leo Tolstoy
Money, in itself, is evil. And therefore he who gives money gives evil. -- Leo Tolstoy
His father always talked to him - so Seryozha felt - as though he were addressing some boy of his own imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father to act being the story-book boy. -- Leo Tolstoy
So much the worse for you!" he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, "Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this! -- Leo Tolstoy
A person who has spoiled his stomach will criticize his meal saying that the food is bad; the same thing happens with people who are not satisfied with their lives -- Leo Tolstoy
And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever. -- Leo Tolstoy
Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? -- Leo Tolstoy
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family
the monkey. -- Leo Tolstoy
Stepan Arkadyevitch felt exactly the difference that Pyotr Oblonsky described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his salvation; in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the world again. -- Leo Tolstoy
And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. -- Leo Tolstoy
In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children. -- Leo Tolstoy
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. -- Leo Tolstoy
No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. -- Leo Tolstoy
The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. -- Leo Tolstoy
All this was as it should be, because welfare and happiness of the world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse universe the assistence. -- Leo Tolstoy
Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him, though they were meaningless. -- Leo Tolstoy
I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy. -- Leo Tolstoy
I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military life; -- Leo Tolstoy
the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire -- Leo Tolstoy
If you don't strain the strings, and then try to break them, you'll find it a difficult job; but strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere weight of one finger on the strained string will snap it. -- Leo Tolstoy
If people tell you that
you should live your life preparing for the future, do not believe
them. Real Life is found only in the present. -- Leo Tolstoy
So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves -- Leo Tolstoy
Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. -- Leo Tolstoy
When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her. -- Leo Tolstoy
I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse. -- Leo Tolstoy
He meditated on the the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once
in a lifetime: that force which gives man a power of making himself, or even as it seemed to him - of making the universe
into anything he wishes. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole. -- Leo Tolstoy
When I am engrossed in an idea, all else is mere diversion. -- Leo Tolstoy
Every monarch in the world, except the Emperor of China, wears a military uniform, and bestows the greatest rewards on the man who kills the greatest number of his fellow-creatures. -- Leo Tolstoy
I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states. -- Leo Tolstoy
He always felt himself dependent on Chief Master who sent him into this life, he knew that when dying he would still be in that Master's power and would not be ill-used to and accustomed to. -- Leo Tolstoy
That's it, come on! -- Leo Tolstoy
Can't you go tomorrow?' she said. 'No, I can't! The business I'm going for, the warrant and the money, won't have come by tomorrow,' he replied. -- Leo Tolstoy
He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job he could. -- Leo Tolstoy
Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people
that's in your hands. -- Leo Tolstoy
But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. -- Leo Tolstoy
To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. -- Leo Tolstoy
Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand -- Leo Tolstoy
I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old. -- Leo Tolstoy
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} -- Leo Tolstoy
The terrible thing is that it's impossible to tear the past out by the roots. Impossible to tear it out, but possible to hide the memory of it. -- Leo Tolstoy
Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak. -- Leo Tolstoy
People who are given to deliberating on their actions generally find themselves in a serious frame of mind when it comes to embarking on a journey or changing their mode of life. At such moments one reviews the past and forms plans for the future. -- Leo Tolstoy
The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. -- Leo Tolstoy
In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty. -- Leo Tolstoy
Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise. -- Leo Tolstoy
Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another? -- Leo Tolstoy
Where there's law there's injustice, -- Leo Tolstoy
And it never occurs to anyone to admit a greatness that is not commensurate with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable puniness. -- Leo Tolstoy
I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man's course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness. -- Leo Tolstoy
It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we
must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy. -- Leo Tolstoy
And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures. -- Leo Tolstoy
I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you. -- Leo Tolstoy
That religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people -- Leo Tolstoy
Happiness is in your ability to love others. -- Leo Tolstoy
The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this knowledge is open to everyone. -- Leo Tolstoy
Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us. -- Leo Tolstoy
If you no longer believe in the God in whom you believed in before, this comes from the fact that there was something wrong with your belief, and you must strive to understand better that which you call God. -- Leo Tolstoy
I felt how much better and more dignified it was for me to show off the finer side of my soul than of my body. -- Leo Tolstoy
The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good. -- Leo Tolstoy
It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans. -- Leo Tolstoy
Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. -- Leo Tolstoy
