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Leo Tolstoy Quotes
1. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy
2. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
3. “If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
4. “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The
Kreutzer Sonata
5. “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, Anna Karenina
6. “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
7. “If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be
the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a
moment, cease your work, look around you.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies
8. “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like
the sun, even without looking.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
9. “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
10. “Spring is the time of plans and projects.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
11. “If you want to be happy, be.” ― Leo Tolstoy
12. “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
13. “Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
14. “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” ― Leo Tolstoy
15. “When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy
16. “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
17. “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
18. “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
19. “A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is
easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
20. “Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
21. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” ― Leo Tolstoy
22. “Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can
understand."― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
23. “Anything is better than lies and deceit!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
24. “I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and
not as one would like them to be. -Dolly” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
25. “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession
26. “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
27. “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, Anna Karenina
28. “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
29. “If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
30. “Boredom: the desire for desires.” ― Leo Tolstoy
31.
32. “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
33. “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
34. “Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or
desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
35. “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
36. “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.” ― Leo Tolstoy
37. “They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no
happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
38. “The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.” ― Leo Tolstoy
39. “it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
40. “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to
town.” ― Leo Tolstoy
41. “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy
42. “All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the
world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while
the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
43. “If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
44. “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” ― Leo Tolstoy
45. “But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to
prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone
but myself. I have that right, haven't I?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
46. “It's hard to love a woman and do anything.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
47. “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, War and Peace
48. “But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
49. “I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always
talk about it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
50. “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.” ― Leo Tolstoy
51. “You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with
divine love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
52. “Love those you hate you.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
53. “It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken
and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
54. “The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope,
light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
55. “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
56. “He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
57. “He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and
she began.” ― Leo Tolstoy
58. “A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he
thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.” ― Leo Tolstoy
59. “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
60. “To get rid of an enemy one must love him. ” ― Leo Tolstoy
61. “Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy,
and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
62. “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,
Anna Karenina
63. “Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
64. “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
65. “Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
66. “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, Anna Karenina
67. “I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
68. “I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and
the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.” ― Leo Tolstoy
69. “We are asleep until we fall in Love!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
70. “She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he
was here to be where she was.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Vol 1 of 8
71. “Music is the shorthand of emotion” ― Leo Tolstoy
72. “Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
73. “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, War and Peace
74. “All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
75. “Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out
for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.” ― Leo Tolstoy
76. “Everything intelligent is so boring.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
77. “Everything I know, I know because of love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
78. “Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of
something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved
him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed.
And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To
love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved
with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt
such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with
human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not
even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated
in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only
possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say...” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
79. “To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.” ― Leo Tolstoy
80. “Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he
said was very clever or very stupid.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Война и мир
81. “How can one be well...when one suffers morally?” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
82. “I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others
that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible....except by getting
off his back.” ― Leo Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do?
83. “It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
84. “Every heart has its own skeletons.” ― Leo Tolstoy
85. “He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as
one sees the sun, without looking.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
86. “And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
87. “There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that
everyone around him lives in the same way.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
88. “Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
89. “Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.” ― Leo Tolstoy
90. “My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Notes
91. “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, Anna Karenina
92. “Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked
them.”― Leo Tolstoy
93. “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
94. “Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could,
and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise
you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...
Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
95. “Enough or not...it will have to do” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
96. “Everything depends on upbringing. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
97. “I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.” ― Leo Tolstoy
98. “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession
99. “He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but
seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
100.
“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.” ― Leo Tolstoy
101.
“God is the same everywhere.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
102. “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, Anna Karenina
103. “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
104. “In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as
grease is necessary to keep wheels turning. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
105. “There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and
brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world
becomes.” ― Leo Tolstoy
106. “Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without
attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she
was talking to.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
107. “To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
108.
“Kings are the slaves of history.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
109. “A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically
irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on
his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an
Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is
unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A
Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know
anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
110.
“Life did not stop, and one had to live.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
111. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
112. “All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better
than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
113. “Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
114. “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,
Anna Karenina
115. “What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have
come to be where you are," he said; "I can't help it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
116. “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
117. “He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty
recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that
then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out
of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew
that what bound him to her could not be broken.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
118.
“One must be cunning and wicked in this world.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
119. “The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of
an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.” ― Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?
120.
121.
“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."Vronsky”
― Leo Tolstoy, Ana Karenina
122. “You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that
this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
123. “There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday,
and there was the day before...” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
124.
“As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” ― Leo Tolstoy
125. “Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own.
Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do
not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning
or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to
laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the
condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer
Sonata” ― Leo Tolstoy
126. “Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I
am seeing?” ― Leo Tolstoy
127.
“she smiled at him, and at her own fears.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
128. “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, Anna Karenina
129. “Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
130.
“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
131. “He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
132. “And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the
dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of
intellect.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
133. “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,
Anna Karenina
134.
“Teach French and unteach sincerity.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
135. “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, War
and Peace
136. “And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such
love there can be no sort of tragedy.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
137. “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, Anna Karenina
138. “What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of
wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to
one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power
is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
139. “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
140. “My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing
these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could
consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire
or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not
have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a
wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that
there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what
it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.” ― Leo Tolstoy
141. “Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
142. “In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer...” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom
of God Is Within You
143. “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, Anna
Karenina
144. “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
145.
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.” ― Leo Tolstoy
146. “One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
147. “When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
148. “If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
149. “I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds
no outlet in our quiet life.” ― Leo Tolstoy
150. “Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of
being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I
don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not
able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another
person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the
hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?” ― Leo Tolstoy,
The Kreutzer Sonata
151.
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
152.
“There are as many kinds of love, as there are hearts” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
153. “everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than
these two: patience and time, they will do it all.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
154. “For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
155. “if they hadn’t both been pretending, but had had what is called a heart-to-heart talk, that is,
simply told each other just what they were thinking and feeling, then they would just have
looked into each other’s eyes, and Constantine would only have said: ‘You’re dying, dying,
dying!’ – while Nicholas would simply have replied: ‘I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, afraid,
afraid!’ That’s all they would have said if they’d been talking straight from the heart. But it was
impossible to live that way, so Levin tried to do what he’d been trying to do all his life without
being able to, what a great many people could do so well, as he observed, and without which
life was impossible: he tried to say something different from what he thought, and he always
felt it came out false, that his brother caught him out and was irritated by it.” ― Leo Tolstoy
156.
“I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
157. “There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
158. “the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"...
p982” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
159. “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, Anna Karenina
160. “Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
161. “The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
162. “If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness
either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.” ― Leo Tolstoy
163. “All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
164. “Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it
because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or
because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every
action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not
free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
165. “In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
166. “God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
167. “I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have
the right to do that, haven't I?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
168. “Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the
gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet
gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that
same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan
Ilych
169. “Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And
it's all so unimportant!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
170. “Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God.
And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to
love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the
guiltlessness of suffering.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
171. “But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the
ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which
there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime
something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no
conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
172. “But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
173. “There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and
insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words,
become oblivious.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
174. “We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
175. “But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
176.
“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.
Such is the quality of bees...” ― Leo Tolstoy
177. “People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they
have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature
changes with the times.” ― Leo Tolstoy
178. “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity,
can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them
to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the
fabric of their lives.” ― Leo Tolstoy
179.
“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, The Death of Ivan Ilych
180. “I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is
very silly but it will pass.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
181.
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
182. “In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
183. “These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and
in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments
when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
184.
“The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
185. “It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the
blame for everybody else's mistakes.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
186. “One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be
qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so
on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more
often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be
true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet
we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers;
the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows
swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same
with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests
one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
187. “In captivity, in the shed, Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his
life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural
human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity; but now, in
these last three weeks of the march, he had learned a new and more comforting truth - he had
learned that there is nothing frightening in the world. 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. He had learned that there is a limit to
suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close; that the man who suffers
because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling
asleep on the bare, damp ground, one side getting cold as the other warmed up; that when he
used to put on his tight ballroom shoes, he suffered just as much as now, when he walked
quite barefoot (his shoes had long since worn out) and his feet were covered with sores.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
188. “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, Anna
Karenina
189.
“History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.” ― Leo Tolstoy
190. “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.” ― Leo Tolstoy
191. “The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the
stag's horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long
wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash-tray,
a manuscript-book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant
a doubt of the possibility of arranging this new life, of which he had been dreaming on the
road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: 'No, you're not going
to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're going to be the same as
you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to
amend, and falls, and everlasting expectations, of a happiness which you won't get, and which
isn't possible for you.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
192. “Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with
his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as
he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and
makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
193. “One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite
qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like
that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is
narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull,
now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human
quality and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes
unlike himself—while still remaining the same man.” ― Leo Tolstoy
194.
“Everything I know...I know because I love".” ― Leo Tolstoy
195. “The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is
connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the
predestination and inevitability of his every action.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
It is heavenly, when I overcome
My earthly desires
But nevertheless, when I'm not successful,
It can also be quite pleasurable.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
196. “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, Anna Karenina
197. “The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of
insanity they do not notice in themselves.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Devil
198.
“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.” ― Leo Tolstoy
199. “He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of
goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious
part in it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
200. “excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare
shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
201. “Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself,
there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such
conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem
to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
202. But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had
even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was
not thinking of the meaning of his life.
203.
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.” ― Leo Tolstoy
204. “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, Anna Karenina
205.
“And where love ends, hate begins” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
206. “Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell
yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve
chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry
when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
207. “Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once
experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
208. “Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his
own resources, would be able to bring up a child.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
209. “He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
210. “Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little
corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with
stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with
the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever
it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn
on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the
wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were
bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting
their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the
walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men
and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not
this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's
world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony
and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for
wielding power over each other.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
211.
“Hell is the inability to love.” ― Leo Tolstoy
212. “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
213. “I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
214. “But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the
thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of which
he felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of
kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called
heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life
that present themselves, and desire that alone.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
215. “How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?... All will end in death, all!” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
216. “There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.” ― Leo Tolstoy
217. “It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over."
"Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
218. “I don't give a damn unless I'm fond of a person;but I'd sacrifice my life for those I am fond
of; the rest I'd throttle if they stood in my way...And you may not believe me but if I still set a
value on life it is only because I still hope one day to meet such a heavenly creature who will
regenarate me, purify me and elevate me. But you don't understand that.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
219. “But one thing I beg of you, look on me as your friend; and if you want some help, advice, or
simply want to open your heart to someone- not now, but when things are clearer in your
heart- think of me.' He took her hand and kissed it. 'I shall be happy, if I am able...' Pierre was
confused.
'Don't speak to me like that; I'm not worth it!' cried Natasha...
'Hush, hush your whole life lies before you,' he said to her.
'Before me! No! All is over for me,' she said, with shame and humiliation.
'All over?' he repeated. 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, best man in the
world, and if I were free I would be on my knees this minute to beg for your hand and your
love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
220. “the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as
always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of
Ivan Ilych
221. “Remember that there is only one important time and it is Now. The present moment is the
only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person with
whom you are, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other
person in the future? The most important pursuit is making that person, the one standing at
you side, happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.” ― Leo Tolstoy
222. “Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
223. “When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to
the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it
seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living
resolutely and without hesitation.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
224. “The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme
law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.” ― Leo Tolstoy
225. “A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own
body.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
226. “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, The Death of Ivan Ilych
227. “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, War and Peace
228. “When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his
essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying
one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of
life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound,
sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating
touch.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
229. “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
230. “truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is
not gold.” ― Leo Tolstoy
231. “Not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at
my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out.
It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am
ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I
was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help
me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.
232. Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out
to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. 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! If it is not the
right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you
must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not
be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going
home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and
support.” ― Leo Tolstoy
233. “Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty
or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess
of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the
production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union
among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and
progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.” ― Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?
234. “Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he
nevertheless recovered.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
235. “The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men
are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in
relation to Caius, but not to him at all.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
236. “There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even
the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget
oneself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
237. “You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil
- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Christians and the
Law-Courts
238. “These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same
time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped
its wings and fluttered, gleaming in the sunshine among the snowdust quivering in the air,
while the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted out of a little window as the loaves were put
out. All this together was so extraordinarily wonderful that Levin burst out laughing and crying
for joy.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
239. “Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made
(Latin).” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
240. “Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love
my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed
it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason!
Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who
hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of
loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
241.
“Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.” ― Leo Tolstoy
242. “no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own
peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown
to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in
medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the
maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot
occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was
to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that
business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they
were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow
substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were
given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they
satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and
always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that
eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done,
which is felt by those who are suffering.” ― Leo Tolstoy
243. “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, War and Peace
244. “I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it
right.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
245. “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, Family Happiness
246. “but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of
it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which
I have the power to put into it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
247. “But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
248.
“There are such repulsive faces in the world.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
249. “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, Anna Karenina
250. “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman
talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid
things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid
things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
251. “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
252. “What is to be done? There was no solution, but the universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. The answer is: one must live in the needs of
the day -- that is, forget oneself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
253. “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
254. “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, Anna
Karenina
255. “A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality,
and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of
born freethinker has been appearing, who’ve never even heard that there have been laws of
morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative
ideas about everything, that is savages.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
256. “There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a
ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at
the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor
fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast,
neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So
he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to
it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that
awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he
looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way
round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it
and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and
knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of
honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I
am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me,
ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I
try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white
mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am
hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only
one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them.
And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.
257. The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer
deceived me. No matter how many times I am told: you cannot understand the meaning of life,
do not thinking about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long.
Now I cannot help seeing day and night chasing me and leading me to my death. This is all I
can see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie.
258. Those two drops of honey, which more than all else had diverted my eyes from the cruel
truth, my love for my family and for my writing, which I called art – I no longer found sweet.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
259. “Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I
cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an
infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and
that bubble am I.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
260. “For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and
impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
261. “I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my
feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.
262. My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing
these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could
consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire
or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not
have know what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish,
was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there
was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it
consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked,
walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but
destruction. It was impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes
or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death--complete
annihilation.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
263. “It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
264. “No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
265. “I'm getting old, that's the thing! What's in me now won't be there anymore.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
266. “Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
267. “...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
268. “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, Anna
Karenina
269. “What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I?
What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there
was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all
an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will
die and learn everything--or stop asking.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
270. “They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
271. “He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of
happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that
happiness is the realization of desires.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
272. “ٰ"The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one
suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.” ― Leo Tolstoy
273. “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, Anna Karenina
274.
“Life is fragile and absurd.” ― Leo Tolstoy
275. “What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or
endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.”
― Leo Tolstoy
276. “The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible . . . and to
serve others as much as possible.” ― Leo Tolstoy
277. “He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what
he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those
around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
278. “Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
279.
“Happiness is pleasure without regret” ― Leo Tolstoy
280. “Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
281. “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, Anna Karenina
282. “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, War and Peace
283. “In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either
complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a
couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be
undertake.
284. Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of
it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
285. “…the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure
themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the
one which coincides with the truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy
286. “Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually
encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves
very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and
morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, A Confession
287.
“He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
288. “but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite
ordinary occurrence.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
289. “The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had
really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end
everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it
was terrible but true” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
290. “She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of
ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not
seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted
of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
291. “Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the
best happiness was already in the past.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
292. “Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and
always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a
dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others
present it would be still worse.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
293. “Remember then: there is only one time that is important-- Now! It is the most important
time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with
whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and
the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into
this life!” ― Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live by and Other Tales
294. “I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover
in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer
Sonata
295. “In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair,
and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one
mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery
had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
296. “So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and
your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of
wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service
because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also
want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always
be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made
up of light and shade.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
297.
“… for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
298. “There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else
being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The
Kingdom of God Is Within You
299. “She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the
state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not
lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
300. “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, Anna Karenina
301.
“To speak of it would be giving importance to something that has none.” ― Leo Tolstoy
302. “I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which
found no outlet in our quiet life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
303. “I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand
that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You
can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything."
304.
"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling.
305. "The most utterly loathsome and coarse; I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits,
but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing
was left but the most loathsome.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
306. “According to the biblical tradition the absence of work -- idleness -- was a condition of the
first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in
fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread
by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both
idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man
could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he
would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such
state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men -- the military
class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of
military service, and it always will.” ― Leo Tolstoy
307. “it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the
person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.” ― Leo Tolstoy
308. “As soon as she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss,
his life, himself - what was best in himself, what he had so long sought and longed for - was
quickly, so quickly approaching him. She did not walk but seemed, by some unseen force, to
float to him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by that same bliss of love
that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light
of love. She stopped close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped on his
shoulders.
309. She had done all she could - she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shyly,
blissfully. He put his arms around her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.”
― Leo Tolstoy
310. “at one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of
religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a
new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that
there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you
see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to
work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and
you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the
literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks
he's finished.” ― Leo Tolstoy
311. “Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however
cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
312. “You're not going to be different ... you're going to be the same as you've always been; with
doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and
everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you.”
― Leo Tolstoy
313. “At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his
reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of
that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands
he felt himself, his soul, and his love?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
314. “In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look
rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets,
and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce
so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it
would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
315. “I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
316.
“Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
317. “This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought
of the writer or reformer. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
318. “They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked,
would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say,
for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon
as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new
and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal
before us.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
319. “Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and
having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. It
seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in
ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in
horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service.
'Nothing is without consequence, and nothing is important: it's all the same in the end. The
thing to do is to save myself from it all as best I can,' thought Pierre. Not to see IT, that terrible
IT.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
320. “I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as
she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no
resources in herself” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
321. “The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity
of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated
without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more
deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Resurrection
322. “There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once
disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are
people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which
he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
323. “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, Anna Karenina
324.
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
325. “I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
326. “Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't
got.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
327. “Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!” ―
Leo Tolstoy
328. “He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
329. “Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
330. “If everyone fought only for his own convictions, there would be no wars.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
331. “My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is
not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good
which it is in my power to put into it!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
332. “How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of
an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in
comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of
ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your
reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings
similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the
significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do
you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?” ― Leo Tolstoy
333. “When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is
evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.” ― Leo Tolstoy
334. “Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a
fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a
support.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
335. “The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was
incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits
made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without
work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Le roi est mort,
vive le roi! Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just
another way of making money without work.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
336. “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, War and Peace
337. “Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
338. “Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the
going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and
time.” ― Leo Tolstoy
339.
“Where love is, there God is also.” ― Leo Tolstoy
340. “It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had
hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were
as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to
seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I
should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me!... But to whom should I say this? To
some power--- indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which
I cannot express in words---The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who
has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the
nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something
incomprehensible but all important!” ― Leo Tolstoy
341. “We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our
dreams.” ― Leo Tolstoy
342. “Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that
there is such a thing as death.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
343. “I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
344. “Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
345. “It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive,
and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained
unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Resurrection
346. “And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to
understand or pity him” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
347.
“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
348. “What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
349. “All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism,
self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like
that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were
influenced only by their immediate personal interests.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
350. “In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the
law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for
instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and
efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when
lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks
with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of
supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself
and having a deleterious effect on government service.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
351. “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." ― Leo Tolstoy
352. "Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I...” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
353. “A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a
mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were
also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The
mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
354. “The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change
of life or by a change of conscience.” ― Leo Tolstoy
355. “Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and worthy of a man of this
age to hold a position from which he receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take
from the people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing cannon, torpedoes, and
other instruments of butchery, so as to make war on people with whom we wish to be at
peace, and who feel the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devoting one's
whole life to constructing these instruments of butchery, or to preparing oneself and others for
the work of murder.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
356. “At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him
feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were
done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not
exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at
remembering them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
357. “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, Anna Karenina
358. “And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot
carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine
law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot
even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize
the duty of what is called allegiance.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
359. “But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why
not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that
someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves.
Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs
and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went on, that people who
solemnly utter those words, 'I love you,' either deceive themselves, or what's still worse,
deceive others.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
360. “Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
361. “He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty
recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.” ― Leo Tolstoy
362. “I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my
mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other
people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail
in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray--but my life now,
my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not
meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in
my power to put into it!” ― Leo Tolstoy
363. “The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
364. “I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will
always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in
this world there is truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
365. “ I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?" she said, letting fall the hand with
which she had grasped the doorpost. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her
face.
"What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have
come to be where you are," he said, "I can’t help it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
366. “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, Anna Karenina
367.
“I'd rather end up wishing I hadn’t than end up wishing I had.” ― Leo Tolstoy
368. “Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
369. “Yes, there is something uncanny, demonic and fascinating in her.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
370. “Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
371. “Respect is an invention of people who want to cover up the empty place where love should
be.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
372.
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
373. “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, War and Peace
374.
“All is over…I have nothing but you, remember that.”
“I can never forget what is my whole life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
375. “Nothing has been discovered, nothing has been invented. We can only know that we know
nothing. And that's the highest degree of human wisdom.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
376. “To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other
because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such
circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke
was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of
Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
377. “He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in
consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world,
obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and
constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both
forgot everything but their love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
378. “Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
379. “By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there
unnoticed." ― Leo Tolstoy
380. “A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem,
gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges
seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force
of life pushing up from inside.
This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her
love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love
awoke, and life awoke.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
381. “I know now that people only seem to live when they care only for themselves, and that it is
by love for others that they really live. He who has Love has God in him, and is in God - because God is Love. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live by and Other Tales
382. “Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself
by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and
mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all
lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing
in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that
"someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable
meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided
understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or
tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me;
nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be,
will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail
to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is
intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere
fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty
about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
383. “He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
384. “In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be
calm, happy, and noble.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
385. “Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest
which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Great
Short Works
386. “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, Anna Karenina
387. “Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is
something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is
common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of
knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not
search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying
man seeking salvation. I found nothing.” ― Leo Tolstoy
388. “It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached
love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one
another.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
389. “Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full. 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, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
390. “They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness
that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not
weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.
With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must go to bed, often to
lie awake the greater part of the night. Next morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the
law courts, speak, and write; or if he did not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a
day each of which was a torture. And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss,
with no one who understood or pitied him.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
391. “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.” ― Leo Tolstoy
392. “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, War and
Peace
393. “He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew
that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to
him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if
the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll
as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a
distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both
ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
394. “There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
395.
“What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
396. “I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go
on until you remember what was there before you were in the world. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
397.
“God knows, but He's waiting” ― Leo Tolstoy
398. “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
399. “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
400. “If a man, before he passed from one stage to another, could know his future life in full
detail, he would have nothing to live for. It is the same with the life of humanity. If it had a
programme of the life which awaited it before entering a new stage, it would be the surest sign
that it was not living, nor advancing, but simply rotating in the same place.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
401. “He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better
than before.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
402. “It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war.
That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who
hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may
slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to
war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, others will be proud to
go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of ribbon or gold lace.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of
God Is Within You
403. “People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force is a theoretical one, which
can be neglected. Yet this question is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some
answer from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been outwardly professed, this
question is for men in their social life like the question which presents itself to a traveler when
the road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but will go on just as I did before.
There was one road, now there are two, and he must make his choice.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The
Kingdom of God Is Within You
404. “To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same
as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
405. “Don’t you know that you are all my life to me? ...But peace I do not know, and can’t give to
you. My whole being, my love...yes! I cannot think about you and about myself separately. You
and I are one to me. And I do not see before us the possibility of peace either for me or for
you. I see the possibility of despair, misfortune...or of happiness-what happiness!...Is it
impossible?" ― Leo Tolstoy
406. “How strange, extraordinary, and joyful it was to her to think that her son - the little son,
whose tiny limbs had faintly stirred within her twenty years ago, for whose sake she had so
often quarreled with the count, who would spoil him, the little son, who had first learnt to say
grusha, and then had learnt to say baba - that that son was now in a foreign land, in strange
surroundings, a manly warrior, alone without help or guidance, doing there his proper manly
work. All the world-wide experience of ages, proving that children do imperceptibly from the
cradle grow up into men, did not exist for the countess. The growth of her son had been for
her at every strage of his growth just as extraordinary as though millions of millions of men
had not grown up in the same way. Just as, twenty years before, she could not believe that the
little creature that was lying somewhere under her heart, would one day cry and learn to talk,
now she could not believe that the same little creature could be that strong, brave man, that
paragon of sons and of men that, judging by this letter, he was now.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
407. “I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
408.
“Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
409.
“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.” ― Leo Tolstoy
410. “Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it
unhindered and let it defend itself.” ― Leo Tolstoy
411. “Suppose a problem in psychology was set: What can be done to persuade the men of our
time — Christians, humanitarians or, simply, kindhearted people — into committing the most
abominable crimes with no feeling of guilt? There could be only one way: to do precisely what
is being done now, namely, to make them governors, inspectors, officers, policemen, and so
forth; which means, first, that they must be convinced of the existence of a kind of organization
called ‘government service,’ allowing men to be treated like inanimate objects and banning
thereby all human brotherly relations with them; and secondly, that the people entering this
‘government service’ must be so unified that the responsibility for their dealings with men
would never fall on any one of them individually.” ― Leo Tolstoy
412. “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, Anna Karenina
413. “So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what
purpose he had been placed in the word.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
414. “Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she
would not be happy” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
415. “Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with
divine love.” ― Leo Tolstoy
416. “He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with
terrible energy towards one blissful goal.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
417. “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, The Journal of Leo Tolstoy
418. “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,
Anna Karenina
419. “Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that
the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his
strength.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
420. “All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and
women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this
spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world,
given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to
love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
421.
“But live while you live, tomorrow you die...” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
422. “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, War and Peace
423. “What is precious is not the reward but the work. And I wish you to understand that. If you
work and study in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard to you; but when you work, if
you love the work, you will find your reward in that.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
424. “At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the
human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the
means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too
depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee
everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one's eyes
to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a
man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the
second.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
425. “A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it
up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper,
scattered the peas in all directions and ran away” ― Leo Tolstoy
426. “But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second car. And exactly at the
moment when the midpoint between the wheels drew level with her, she threw away the red
bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the car, and with a
light movement, as though she would rise immediately, dropped on her knees. And at the
instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. 'Where am I? What am I doing? What
for?' She tried to get up, to throw herself back; but something huge and merciless struck her
on the head and dragged her down on her back.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
427. “One must do one of two tings: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and
then stick up for one's rights in it;or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as i
do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
428. “As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget
Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died.
What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I
should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live,
only when I feel Him and seek Him. “What more do you seek?” exclaimed a voice within me.
“This is He. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the
same thing. God is life.”
“Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.” And more than ever before, all
within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession
429. “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
430. “Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick
of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
431. “In the past he had been unable to see the great, teh unfathomable, the infinite, in anything.
He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had been seeking it. In everything near and
comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and meaningless.
He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and gazed into the distance where the
distance had seemed to him great and infinite only because they were not clearly visible. Such
had Europan life, politics, Masonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. Bet even
then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated that
distance too, and he had seen there the same triviality, worldliness, and absurdity.
432. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, the eternal, the infinite in everything, and
therefore, in order to look at it, to enjoy his contemplation of it, he naturally discarded teh
telescope through which he had till then been gazing over the heads of men, and joyfully
surveyed the ever-changeing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And
the closer he looked, the happier and more seren he was. The awful question: What for? a
simple answer was now always ready in his soul: Because there is a God, that God without
whose will not one hair of a man's head falls.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
433. “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, War and Peace
434. “Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing
what others have not seen.” ― Leo Tolstoy
435. “This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree
of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
436. “Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
437. “Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from
the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on
with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put
myself in such a position".” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
438. “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, War
and Peace
439. “the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that
they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only the griefs,
only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
440. “The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
441. “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, Great Short Works
442. “Consider the death of the body in terms of God and His law. Your life, the life within you,
encompasses everything within itself -- not only those whom you have lost but everything -- it
includes God within itself. And if there is a God in your soul, then your soul is full, and there is
no loss. And if there is a God, then there is love towards Him and towards people, towards
those unfortunates who are in need of love.
If you believe that everything that has happened to us in our life has been for our own good,
then that which happens to us in our death is also for our own good.
All of our misfortunes reveal to us the presence in us of the divine, of the immortal, of the selfsufficient which constitutes the foundation of our life. Death reveals to us fully our true Self.
That which happens to man after his death we cannot and ought not to know. We could not
live or do God's work if we knew it. If what awaits us after death were worse than what we
meet with here on earth, we would prize this life even more than we do now, and there is no
greater impediment to the fulfillment of God's will than concern for one's own life. If what
awaits us after death were better than now, then we would scorn this life and make every
effort to flee from it.
We do not know what awaits us after death, but we do know one thing without any doubt,
namely, that the spiritual Being into which, according to Christian teachings, I have passed
over is indissoluble, eternal, free and omnipotent because this Being is God. I shall go into that
Source of Love from which I came and into that which I feel is Love. 'Into thine hands I commit
my spirit.' That is all we can say, yet this too is something. For the person who believes in the
existence of Him from whom he came and to Whom he is going, this is all there is, and nothing
more is needed.” ― Leo Tolstoy
443. “But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
-- he recovered.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
444. “Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand 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." These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But
they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too
one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
445. “These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but
need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that
one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult,
but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good,
but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his
heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
446. “And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been
darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
447. “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, Anna Karenina
448. “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, The Death of Ivan Ilych
And Other Stories
449. “To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire population
entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every
administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as
long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark,
resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are
moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move my
itself, and then the delusion is no longer possible. The ship follows its own enormous,
independent course, the pole does not reach the moving ship, and the ruler suddenly, from his
position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and
feeble human being.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
450. “A man of the present day, whether he believes in the divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to
see that to assist in the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in taking from a
poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle
officials, who live in luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some man we
have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the streets; or in plundering and
butchering in war; or in inculcating savage and idolatrous superstitious in the place of the law
of Christ; or in impounding the cow found on one's land, though it belongs to a man who has
no land; or to cheat the workman in a factory, by imposing fines for accidentally spoiled
articles; or making a poor man pay double the value for anything simply because he is in the
direst poverty;--not a man of the present day can fail to know that all these actions are base
and disgraceful, and that they need not do them. They all know it. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, The
Kingdom of God Is Within You
451.
“Everything I know, I know because I love.” ― Leo Tolstoy
452. “How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but
every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing
humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself” ― Leo Tolstoy
453. “Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested
the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
454. “What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
455. “It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
456. “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, War and Peace
457. “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
458. “In his Petersburg world people were divided into two quite opposite sorts. One--the inferior
sort: the paltry, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people who believe that a husband should
live with the one wife to whom he is married, that a girl should be pure, a woman modest, and
a man, manly, self controlled and firm; that one should bring up one's children to earn their
living, should pay one's debts, and other nonsense of the kind. These were the old-fashioned
and ridiculous people. But there was another sort of people: the real people to which all his set
belonged, who had above all to be well-bred, generous, bold, gay, and to abandon themselves
unblushingly to all their passions and laugh at everything else.” ― Leo Tolstoy
459.
“God gave the day, God gave the strength.” ― Leo Tolstoy
460.
“It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.” ― Leo Tolstoy
461.
“A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
462. “So it would be, were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a force in men and nations
as in inanimate bodies. In men it takes the form of the psychological principle, so truly
expressed in the words of the Gospel, " They have loved darkness better than light, because
their deeds were evil." This principle shows itself in men not trying to recognise the truth, but to
persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is
a life perfectly consistent with truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
463. “What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed
to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass,
young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send
out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten.
The wound was healing from inside.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
464. “If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also
held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible,
but it more closely suited his manner of life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
465. “Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing."
"Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her
bosom.
"So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
466. “She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and
physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded
flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and
ruined it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Vol 4 of 8
467.
“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.” ― Leo Tolstoy
468. “A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a
man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean
that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two
hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Letter to a Hindu
469. “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, War and Peace
470.
“has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning. How” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
471. “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, Anna Karenina
472. “Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the
husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their
family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same
house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband
and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully
conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was so sense in their living together,
and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one
another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did
not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran
wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a
friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day
before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
473. “Rostov kept thinking about that brilliant feat of his, which, to his surprise, had gained him
the St. George Cross and even given him the reputation of a brave man - and there was
something in it that he was unable to understand. "So they're even more afraid than we are!"
he thought. "So that's all there is to so-called heroism? And did I really do it for the fatherland?
And what harm had he done, with his dimple and his light blue eyes? But how frightened he
was! He thought I'd kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand faltered. And they gave me the St.
George Cross. I understand nothing, nothing!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
474. “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
475. “Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
476. “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, War and Peace
477.
“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, Anna Karenina
478. “Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's
flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however,
was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous
(sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very
often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than
beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression
they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she
looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
479. “He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with
his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but
studiously ignoring them. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
480.
“Everything I know...I know because I love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
481. “As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a
picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is
only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human
being for another.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Walk in the Light & Twenty-Three Tales
482. “A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of
pleasure.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“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.
483.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...” ― Leo Tolstoy
484. “Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
485. “I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to
quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With
the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
A Confession
486. “Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as though wondering at the boldness of his question;
but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said
it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
487. “Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle
could last you all your life” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
488.
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.” ― Leo Tolstoy
489. “The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly,
undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the
aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where
there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that
the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought Prince Andrey, and all
at once there came upon him an irrational, spring feeling of joy and renewal. All the best
moments of his life rose to his memory at once. Austerlitz, with that lofty sky, and the dead,
reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, thrilled by the beauty of the
night, and that night and that moon- it all rushed at once into his mind.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
490. “The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is
continuous.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
491. “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, War and Peace
492. “It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become
confused.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
493. “in infinite space and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex,
is differentiated",is to say nothing at all. Those are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite
is neither complex nor simple, no forward nor backward, or better or worse.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession
494. “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, War and Peace
495. “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, War and Peace
496. “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, War and
Peace
497. “I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these
blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I
wish to destroy that by which I live.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
498. “He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one
thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to
which to reply.” ― Leo Tolstoy
499.
“Where there is law there is injustice” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
500. “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, The Kingdom of God is Within You
501. “Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness” ― Leo Tolstoy
502. “There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged
beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a
dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb
out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of
the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and
clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to
the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two
mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which
he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's
jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he
looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his
tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was
inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen
into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no
longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch
by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the
unescapable dragon and mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable
but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all. The deception of the joys of life which
formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I
may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I
can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night
going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.
The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my
love of family, and of writing -- art as I called it -- were no longer sweet to me. "Family"... said I
to myself. But my family -- wife and children -- are also human. They are placed just as I am:
they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love
them, guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I
feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge
leads them to the truth. And the truth is death.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
503. “I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my
wife.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
504. “And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot
reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.” ― Leo Tolstoy
505. “No one is satisfied with his fortune,and everyone is satisfied with his wit.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
506. “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and
so I can't live," Levin said to himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
507.
“To live in the needs of the day, find forgetfulness.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
508. “But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her,
as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of
them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
509. “That which constitutes the cause of the economic poverty of our age is what the English
call over-production (which means that a mass of things are made which are of no use to
anybody, and with which nothing can be done).” ― Leo Tolstoy, On the Significance of
Science and Art
510. “The further one goes, the better the land seems. ” ― Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a
Man Need? and Other Stories
511. “He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how
constrained.” ― Leo Tolstoy
512. “What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants,
yet this one won't submit.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad
513. “On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and
war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human
nature.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
514. “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, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non Violence
515. “On earth, here on this earth, there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the universe, in the
whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now the children of earth are—
eternally—children of the whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher
beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the Deity—the Supreme Power if
you prefer the term—is manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
why should i suppose it breaks off at me and does not go father and father? I feel that I cannot
vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always have
existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world there is
truth” ― Leo Tolstoy
516. “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, War and Peace
517.
“Anna had the faculty of blushing.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
518. “was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
519. “I think love, both kinds of love, which you remember Plato defines in his "Symposium" both kinds of love serve a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only
the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For
such love there can be no tragedy. "Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good bye," and that's
the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, because there
everything is clear and pure.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
520. “There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he
sees that they are accepted by those about him.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 2 of 2
521. “I think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
522. “Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie
such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.” ― Leo Tolstoy
523. “A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems
to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, The Cossacks
524. “The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse.
It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
525. “Everything seemed pleasant and easy to Nikolai during the first part of his stay in
Voronezh and, as generally happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything
went well and easily.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
526. “-Why are you so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
― Leo Tolstoy
527.
“Everything I know, I know because of love” ― Leo Tolstoy
528.
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” ― Leo Tolstoy
529. “He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of
bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining
that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
530.
“I don’t count life as life without love” ― Leo Tolstoy
531. “That only shows you have no heart,’ she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a
heart, and that was why she was afraid of him” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
532. “If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by onesidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an
expression of one fact of human endeavor.” ― Leo Tolstoy
533. “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, War and Peace
534. “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, Anna Karenina
535. “I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is
eternal and ever precious – your heart, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in
love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know.
Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural
of feelings,But the more difficult the labour and hardship, the higher the reward,” ― Leo
Tolstoy
536.
“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.” ― Leo Tolstoy
537. “Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding
him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of
comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others
are surrounded by the same complexity as he is.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
538. “There is nothing, nothing certain but the nothingness of all that is comprehensible to us,
and the grandeur of something incomprehensible, but more important!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
539. “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, Anna Karenina
540. “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, War and Peace
541. “He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was
standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing
striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd
as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light
on all round her. "Is it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to her?" he thought. The
place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one
moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to make
an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that people of all sorts were moving about
her, and that he too might come there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding
looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
542. “It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question.
For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith
Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must
have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I
fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing
to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the
business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions
of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that
was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, A Confession
543. “Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with
her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was
herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."
"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was
not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin
was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed
Levin.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
544. “Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe
that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the
illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the
finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession
545. “Reason is often the slave of sin; it strives to justify it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and
Other Religious Writings
546. “In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas
which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, though each individual idea,
expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is horribly debased when only one of the
links, of which it forms a part, is taken by itself. But the interlinking of these ideas is not, I think,
an intellectual process, but something else, and it is impossible to express the source of this
interlinking directly in words; it can only be done indirectly by describing images, actions, and
situations in words.” ― Leo Tolstoy
547. “He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor
humility nor purity” ― Leo Tolstoy, Father Sergius
548. “It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who
fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals...” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
549. “Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not
infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are
contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously
and cannot even insult each one another.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
550. “There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion
as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must
inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.
Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an
unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once
committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others,
has an historical value. The higher a man's place in the social scale, the more connections has
with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability
and predestination of every act he commits. "The hearts of kings are in the hand of God." The
king is the slave of history.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
551. “But in the depths of his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his
brother, the more and more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of working for
the public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a
lack of something --not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a lack of vital
force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a man to choose someone out of the
innumerable paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother, the
more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked for the public
welfare, were not led by an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned from
intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to take interest in public affairs, and
consequently took interest in them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by observing
that his brother did not take questions affecting the public welfare or the question of the
immortality of the soul a bit more to heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious
construction of a new machine.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
552. “Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer
Sonata
553. “At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or what was said
of him; he was only glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they would
help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today
learned to understand it so differently.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
554.
“Boredom is desire seeking desire.” ― Leo Tolstoy
555. “The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this
knowledge is open to everyone.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to
Nourish the Soul
556. “True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge which man
establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and
guides his actions.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
557. “Does it ever happen to you," Natasha said to her brother, when they had settled in the
sitting room, "does it ever happen to you that you feel there's nothing more - nothing; that
everything good has already happened? And it's not really boring, but sad?"
"As if it doesn't!" he said. "It's happened to me that everything's fine, everybody's merry, and it
suddenly comes into my head that it's all tiresome and we all ought to die....” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
558. “Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them all. He
had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had been kept open
for him, but there had been conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his
appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev. 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 or their acquaintances.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
559. “It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship
to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a
religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a
person to exist without a religion than without a heart.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and
Other Religious Writings
560. “How horrified he would have been if, seven years ago, when he had just come from
abroad, someone had told him that there was no need to seek or invent anything, that his rut
had long been carved out for him and determined from all eternity, and that, however he
twisted and turned, he would be that which everybody was in his position. He could not have
believed it. Had he not wished with all his soul to establish a republic in Russia, then to
become a Napoleon himself, a philosopher, a tactician, the defeater of Napoleon? Had he not
seen the possibility and passionately wished to transform depraved mankind and bring his
own self to the highest degree of perfection? ... He sometimes comforted himself with the
thought that he happened to be leading his life just so, in the meantime; but then he would be
horrified by another thought, that it was just so, in the meantime, that so many people had
entered this life, this club, as he had, with all their teeth and hair, and come out of it with not a
single tooth or hair left.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
561. “The most mentally deranged people are those who see in others indications of insanity
they do not notice in themselves.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Devil
562. “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, War and Peace
563. “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. And for him, living in a certain
society--owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of
mental activity--to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a
reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his
circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer
accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong,
and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. 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. The liberal party
said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the
barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short
service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the
object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so
very amusing in this world. And with all this, 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. And so Liberalism had become a
habit...Anna Karenina, Tolstoy.” ― Leo Tolstoy
564. “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, War and Peace
565. “It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
566. “And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to
happen” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
567. “But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect
that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so
earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him
as worthy of her.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
568. “The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human
wisdom.” ― Leo Tolstoy
569. “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, Anna Karenina
570.
“Speech is silver but silence is golden.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
571.
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.” ― Leo Tolstoy
572. “Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how
they should change. ” ― Leo Tolstoy
573. “Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one
another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look
established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of
things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of
humanity and were brothers.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
574. “Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had
expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected
surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step
that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a
man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake,
should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly;
that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there
was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be
sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful,
was very difficult.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
575.
“oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?” ― Leo Tolstoy
576. “Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
577. “Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another
sentiment.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Sebastopol in December
578. “"If you prefer it, Your Excellency, a private room will be free directly: Prince Golitsin with a
lady. Fresh oysters have come in."
"Ah, oysters!" Stepan Arkadyevich became thoughtful.
"How if we were to change our program, Levin?" he said, keeping his finger on the bill of fare.
And his face expressed serious hesitation. "Are the oysters good? Mind, now!"
"They're Flensburg, Your Excellency. We've no Ostend."
"Flensburg will do -- but are they fresh?"
"Only arrived yesterday."
"Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the whole program? Eh?"
"It's all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge better than anything; but of
course there's nothing like that here."
"Porridge a la Russe, Your Honor would like?" said the Tatar, bending down to Levin, like a
nurse speaking to a child.
"No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I've been skating, and I'm hungry.
And don't imagine," he added, detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky's face, "that I
shan't appreciate your choice. I don't object to a good dinner."
"I should hope so! After all, it's one of the pleasures of life," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "Well,
then, my friend, you give us two -- or better say three-dozen oysters, clear soup with
vegetables..."
"Printaniere," prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevich apparently did not care to allow
him the satisfaction of giving the French names of the dishes.
"With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then... roast beef; and mind it's
good. Yes, and capons, perhaps, and then stewed fruit."
The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevich's way not to call the dishes by the
names in the French bill of fare, did not repeat them after him, but could not resist rehearsing
the whole menu to himself according to the bill: "Soupe printaniere, turbot sauce
Beaumarchais, poulard a l'estragon, Macedoine de fruits..." and then instantly, as though
worked by springs, laying down one bound bill of fare, he took up another, the list of wines,
and submitted it to Stepan Arkadyevich.
"What shall we drink?"
"What you like, only not too much. Champagne," said Levin.
"What! to start with? You're right though, I dare say. Do you like the white seal?"
"Cachet blanc," prompted the Tatar.
"Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then we'll see."
"Yes, sir. And what table wine?"
"You can give us Nuits. Oh, no -- better the classic Chablis."
"Yes, sir. And your cheese, Your Excellency?"
"Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?"
"No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
579.
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
580. “The Bible legend tells us that the absence of toil - idleness - was a condition of the first
man's state of bliss before the Fall. This love of idleness has remained the same in the fallen
man, but the curse still lies heavy on the human race....because our moral nature is such that
we are unable to be idle and at peace.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
581.
“Send him to the devil, I'm busy.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
582. “Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
583. “There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the
more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid
down for him” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
584. “Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
585. “I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me which directs me. I suffer; but
formerly I was dead and only now do I live.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks
586. “She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And Vronsky’s face, always
so firm and independent, held that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble
submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.
Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he became
serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was enchanting in her
simple black dress, enchanting were her round arms with their bracelets, enchanting was her
firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, enchanting
the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, enchanting was that lovely face in its
animation, but there was something terrible and cruel about her charm.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
587. “Natasha, in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked, as women can walk, with
the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul.” ― Leo Tolstoy
588. “When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any
farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the
historians produce a saving conception of ‘greatness.’ ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the
standards of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for
which a ‘great’ man can be blamed.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
589.
“All families are happy, all families are alike.” ― Leo Tolstoy
590. “As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while
rationally justifying the other's activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that
the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
591. “No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
592. “And then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
593. “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, Anna Karenina
594. “I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
595. “I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one
loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
596. “I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the
rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the
people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever
theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must
be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not
according to progress but according to my own heart.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
597. “Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they
went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
598. “When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot
change.” ― Leo Tolstoy
599. “He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did
not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being
shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was
torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs
strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people
was to hide his wounds from them” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
600. “One step across the dividing line, so like the one between the living and the dead and you
enter an unknown world of suffering and death. What will you find there? Who will be there?
There, just just beyond the field, that tree, that sunlit roof? No one knows, and yet you want to
know. You dread crossing that line, and yet you want to cross it. You know sooner or later you
will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably found
out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all
around you just the same- strong, excited and full of life.' This is what all men think when they
get sight of the enemy, or they feel it if they do not think it, and it is this feeling that gives a
special lustre and a delicious edge to the awareness of everything that is now happening.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
601. “In historical events great men-so called-are but the labels that serve to give a mane to an
event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action
of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at
all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”
― Leo Tolstoy
602. “After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began
singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the
middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat
from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha
singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same
time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For
what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? For his hopes for the
future? Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid
sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him,
and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was. This contrast
made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
603. “The rivalry of the European states in constantly increasing their forces has reduced them
to the necessity of having recourse to universal military service, since by that means the
greatest possible number of soldiers is obtained at the least possible expense. Germany first
hit on this device. And directly one state adopted it the others were obliged to do the same.
And by this means all citizens are under arms to support the iniquities practiced upon them; all
citizens have become their own oppressors.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within
You
604. “We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say,
events the reasonableness of which we do not understand).” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
605. “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, War and Peace
606. “A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
607. And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions,
with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known,
revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out
608. forever.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
609. “Can it be that there is not enough space for man in this beautiful world, under those
immeasurable, starry heavens?” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Raid and Other Stories
610. “«But you are talking of physical love. Do you not admit a love based upon a conformity of
ideals, on a spiritual affinity?»
«Why not? But in that case it is not necessary to procreate together (excuse my brutality).»” ―
Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
611. “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, Anna Karenina
612.
“Everything that I know, I know only because I love.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
613. “I realized that I had been lost, and how I had become lost. I had strayed not so much
because my ideas had been incorrect as because I had lived foolishly. I realized that I had
been blinded from the truth not so much through mistaken thoughts as through my life itself,
which had been spent in satisfying desire and in exclusive conditions of epicureanism. I
realized that my questions as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite
correct. The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life
as a whole. I had asked myself what my life was and had received the answer that it is evil
and meaningless. And this was quite true, for my life of indulgent pursuits was meaningless
and evil, but that answer applied only to my life and not to human life in general. I understood
a truism that I subsequently found in the gospels: that people often preferred darkness to light
because their deeds were evil. For he who acts maliciously hates light and avoids it so as not
to throw light on his deeds. I understood that in order to understand life it is first of all
necessary that life is not evil and meaningless, and then one may use reason in order to
elucidate it. I realized why I had for so long been treading so close to such an obvious truth
without seeing it, and that in order to think and speak about human life one must think and
speak about human life and not about the lives of a few parasites. The truth has always been
the truth, just as 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not admitted it, because in acknowledging that 2 x 2 = 4 I
would have to admit that I was a bad man. And it was more important and necessary for me to
feel that I was good than to admit that 2 x 2 = 4. I came to love good people and to loathe
myself, and I acknowledged the truth. And then it all became clear to me.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession and Other Religious Writings
614. “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, A
Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
615. “In that brief glance Vronsky has time to notice the restrained animation that played over
her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved
her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself
beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately
extinguished the light in her her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable
smile.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
616. “They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
617.
“kitty always assumed the most beautiful things about people” ― Leo Tolstoy
618. “You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go
round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards
the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and
Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides.
The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea,
nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth. If you would only look
up at the heavens, instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand
this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or for your country alone.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Eleven Stories
619. “nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the
heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the
disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war
and violence to Christians.” ― Leo Tolstoy
620. “India, which is the nursery of the great faiths of the world,” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a
Hindu
621. “Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was
not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain
of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men
make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he
united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general,
such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love—he was contented then, but
not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires—boredom. Involuntarily he
began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
622. “I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper...there will be still the same wall between
the holy of holies of my soul and other people...but my life now, my whole life apart from
anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before,
but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
623. “Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain
what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
624. “He meditated on the use to which he should put all the energy of youth which comes to a
man only once in life. Should he devote this power, which is not the strength of intellect or
heart or education, but an urge which once spent can never return, the power given to a man
once only to make himself, or even – so it seems to him at the time – the universe into
anything he wishes: should he devote it to art, to science, to love, or to practical activities?
True, there are people who never have this urge: at the outset of life they place their necks
under the first yoke that offers itself, and soberly toil away in it to the end of their days.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, The Cossacks
625. “Just imagine the existence of a man - let us call him A - who has left youth far behind, and
of a woman whom we may call B, who is young and happy and has seen nothing as yet of life
or of the world. Family circumstances of various kinds brought them together, and he grew to
love her as a daughter, and had no fear that his love would change its nature. But he forgot
that B was so young, that life was still a May-game to her and that it was easy to fall in love
with her in a different way, and that this would amuse her. He made a mistake and was
suddenly aware of another feeling, as heavy as remorse, making its way into his heart, and he
was afraid. He was afraid that their old friendly relations would be destroyed, and he made up
his mind to go away before that happened.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
626. *"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known
happiness!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
627. “That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery
by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
628. “In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over
her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved
her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself
beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile.” ― Leo Tolstoy
629. “Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly
business. We must certainly accept, and we will.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
630. “When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once.
But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and
spring grass.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Great Short Works
631. “Nikolushka and his upbringing, Andre, and religion were Princess Marya's comforts and
joys; but, besides that, since every human being needs his personal hope, Princess Marya
had in the deepest recesses of her soul a hidden dream and hope, which provided the main
comfort of her life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
632. “In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the
lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband
ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a
woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's
children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the
class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real
people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous,
plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything
else.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
633. “I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
― Leo Tolstoy
634. “Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and culture, as
generous in the highest sense of the word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for
the public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately
he knew his brother, the more and more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of
working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was possibly not so much a
quality as a lack of something — not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a
lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a man to choose
someone out of the innumerable paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he
knew his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who
worked for the public welfare, were not led by an impulse of the heart to care for the public
good, but reasoned from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to take interest in
public affairs, and consequently took interest in them. Levin was confirmed in this
generalization by observing that his brother did not take questions affecting the public welfare
or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more to heart than he did chess problems, or
the ingenious construction of a new machine.” ― Leo Tolstoy
635. “I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for the past love
which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its
place remains, but it is all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections
are still left, and gratitude; but...” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
636. “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, How Much Land Does a Man
Need? and Other Stories
637. “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
638.
“You're not racing?" joked the officer.
"Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully.
And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever
phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
639. “He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the peasants, and to do
his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the swish of scythes, and saw before him
Tit's upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and
flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him
the end of the row, where would come the rest.
Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was or whence it came, he felt
a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval
for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops were
falling. Some of the peasants went to their coats and put them on; others--just like Levin
himself--merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant coolness of it.
Another row, and yet another row, followed--long rows and short rows, with good grass and
with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or
early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In
the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it
came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well cut
as Tit's. But so soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he
was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
640. “I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the
Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics.
And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not
express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this is
naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most
cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and
brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a
false belief. And that hostility is increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology.
And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that theology
was itself destroying what it ought to produce.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
641. “Well Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I
warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and
horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist— and I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing
more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave', as you call
yourself! But how are you? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
642. “The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar
charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new
to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day
outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
643. “Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
644. “Answer me two more questions,’ said the King. ‘The first is, Why did the earth bear such
grain then and has ceased to do so now? And the second is, Why your grandson walks with
two crutches, your son with one, and you yourself with none? Your eyes are bright, your teeth
sound, and your speech clear and pleasant to the ear. How have these things come about?’
And the old man answered:
‘These things are so, because men have ceased to live by their own labour, and have taken to
depending on the labour of others. In the old time, men lived according to God’s law. They had
what was their own, and coveted not what others had produced.” ― Leo Tolstoy
645. “Reasoning led him into doubt and kept him from seeing what he should and should not do.
Yet when he did not think, but lived, he constantly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible
judge who decided which of two possible actions was better and which was worse; and
whenever he did not act as he should, he felt it at once.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any possibility of knowing what he was and why he
was living in the world, tormented by this ignorance to such a degree that he feared suicide,
and at the same time firmly laying down his own particular, definite path in life.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
646. “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, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
647. “He felt that now over his every word, his every deed, there was a judge, a judgment, which
was dearer to him than the judgments of all the people in the world. He spoke now, and along
with his words he considered the impression his words would make on Natasha. He did not
deliberately say what would be please her, but whatever he said, he judged himself from her
point of view.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
648. “I turned my attention to every­ thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians,
I was horrified.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
649. “The combination of causes of phenomena is beyond the grasp of the human intellect. But
the impulse to seek causes is innate in the soul of man. And the human intellect, with no
inkling of the immense variety and complexity of circumstances conditioning a phenomenon,
any one of which may be separately conceived of as the cause of it, snatches at the first and
most easily understood approximation, and says here is the cause.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
650. “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, Anna Karenina
651. “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, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily
Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
652. “Come, what did I say, repeat it? he would ask. But I could never repeat anything, so
ludicrous it seemed that he should talk to me, not of himself or me, but of something else, as
though it mattered what happened outside us. Only much later I began to have some slight
understanding of his cares and to be interested in them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan
Ilych And Other Stories
653. “Formerly, when I was told to consider him wise, I kept trying to, and thought I was stupid
myself because I was unable to perceive his wisdom; but as soon as I said to myself, he's
stupid (only in a whisper of course), it all became quite clear! Don't you think so?'
'How malicious you are to-day!'
'Not at all. I have no choice. One of us is stupid, and you know it's impossible to say so of
oneself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
654. “Like the majority of irreproachably virtuous women, wearying often of the monotony of a
virtuous life, Dolly from a distance excused illicit love, and even envied it a little.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
655.
“One might murder and steal and yet be happy” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
656. “He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as
one does the sun, without looking.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
657. “All this was clear to me, and I was glad and at peace. Then it is as if someone is saying to
me, "See that you remember." And I awoke.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
658. “If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.” ―
Leo Tolstoy
659. “If a teacher has only love for the cause, it will be a good teacher. If a teacher has only love
for student, as a father, mother, he will be better than the teacher, who read all the books, but
has no love for the cause, nor to the students. If the teacher combines love to the cause and
to his disciples, he is the perfect teacher.” ― Leo Tolstoy
660. “Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the
whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was
always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the
activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But
now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no
longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary,
saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and
more.” ― Leo Tolstoy
661. “The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow
creatures, are those that have remote consequences.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and
the Law of Violence
662. “Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to
follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she
read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless
steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech,
she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she
too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the
smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.” ― Leo Tolstoy
663. “…the role of the disappointed lover of a maiden or of any single woman might be
ridiculous; but the role of a man who was pursuing a married woman, and who made it the
purpose of his life at all cost to draw her into adultery, was one which had in it something
beautiful and dignified and could never be ridiculous….” ― Leo Tolstoy
664. “And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and
the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do
not see in themselves.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Devil
665. “Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a
Russian novelist, writer, essayist, philosopher, Christian anarchist, pacifist, educational
reformer, moral thinker, and an influential member of the Tolstoy family. As a fiction writer
Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his
masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina; in their scope, breadth and realistic
depiction of Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of realistic fiction. As a moral
philosopher he was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through his work The
Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as
Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Source: Wikipedia” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
666. “As though tears were the indispensable oil without which the machinery of mutual
confidence could not run smoothly between the two sister, the sisters after their tears talked,
not of what was uppermost in their minds, but though they talked of outside matters, they
understood each other.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
667. “For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond
remedy, misfortune his own fault.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
668. “Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought
it as well to secure his adherence, showed off his calm, impartial sagacity before Prince
Andrey, and flattered him with that delicate flattery that goes hand in hand with conceit, and
consists in a tacit assumption that one's companion and oneself are the only people capable
of understanding all the folly of the rest of the world and the sagacity and profundity of their
own ideas.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
669. “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,
Anna Karenina
670. “What is the matter with you?" asked Shcherbatsky.
"Nothing much, but there is little to be happy about in this world."
"Little? You'd better come with me to Paris instead of going to some Mulhausen or other. You'll
see how jolly it will be!"
"No, I have done with that; it is time for me to die."
"That is a fine thing!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing. "I am only just beginning to live."
"Yes, I thought so too till lately; but now I know that I shall soon die."
Levin was saying what of late he had really been thinking. He saw death and the apprroach of
death in everything; but the work he had begun interested him all the more. After all, he had to
live his life somehow, til death came. Everything for him was wrapped in darkness; but just
because of the darkness, feeling his work to be the only thread to guide him through the
darkness, he seized upon it and clung to it with all his might.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
671. “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself,
then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to
transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?
672. “S., a clever and truthful man, once told me the story of how he ceased to believe. On a
hunting expedition, when he was already twenty-six, he once, at the place where they put up
for the night, knelt down in the evening to pray -- a habit retained from childhood. His elder
brother, who was at the hunt with him, was lying on some hay and watching him. When S. had
finished and was settling down for the night, his brother said to him: 'So you still do that?' They
said nothing more to one another. But from that day S. ceased to say his prayers or go to
church. And now he has not prayed, received communion, or gone to church, for thirty years.
And this not because he knows his brother's convictions and has joined him in them, nor
because he has decided anything in his own soul, but simply because the word spoken by his
brother was like the push of a finger on a wall that was ready to fall by its own weight. The
word only showed that where he thought there was faith, in reality there had long been an
empty space, and that therefore the utterance of words and the making of signs of the cross
and genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions. Becoming conscious of their
senselessness he could not continue them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
673.
“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.” ― Leo Tolstoy
674. “We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and
punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of
my life.” ― Leo Tolstoy
675. “There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one's own work. And
he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
676. “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, War and Peace
677.
“He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
678. “Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man
indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled.
But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does not and cannot believe it.
However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the same conditions
and with the same character he will do the same thing as before, yet when, under the same
conditions and with the same character, he approaches for the thousandth time the action that
always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that
he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and
experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in
precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutes
the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossible it may be, it
is so, for without this conceptions of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life,
but he would be unable to live for a single moment.
He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase
freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and
weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger,
virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.
A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life.
If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of
performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause,
that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
679. “...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
680. “If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar
of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
681. “The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in
words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people,
appears to be impossible.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
682.
“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live” ― Leo Tolstoy
683. “Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where
she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the
attainment of his aims that evening…” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
684. “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 Cossacks
685. “Was it through reason that I arrived at the necessity of loving my neighbor and not
throttling him?...Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence and the law which
demands that everyone who hinders the satisfaction of my desires should be throttled. That is
the conclusion of reason. Reason could not discover love for the other, because it’s
unreasonable.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
686. “Oh no, Papa, Kitty objected warmly. Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much
good! Ask anyone you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stah. Perhaps, he said, pressing
her arm with his elbow. But it is better to do good so that, ask whom you will, no one knows
anything about it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
687.
“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
688. “We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
689. “Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact 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, War and Peace
690. “Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the
supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards
himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An
Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and
therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as
an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and
easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows
nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be
known.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
691. “Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that it, to
follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
692. “[...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they
are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
693.
“One need only posit some threat to the public tranquility and any action can be justified.
All the horrors of the reign of terror were based on concern for public tranquility.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
694. “The way to do away with war is for those who do not want war, who regard participation in
it a sin, to refrain from fighting.” ― Leo Tolstoy
695. “The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
696. “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, A Confession and Other
Religious Writings
697. “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
698. “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, Anna Karenina
699. “In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe,
and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
700. “No hay felicidad en la existencia, no hay más que relámpagos de felicidad.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych & Other Stories
701.
“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.” ― Leo Tolstoy
702. “Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she
thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for
getting on.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
703. “And what is justice? The princess thought of that proud word 'justice'. All the complex laws
of man centered for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught
us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do
with justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
704. “The best solution is to be kind and good while ignoring the opinions of others.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
705. “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
706.
“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ” ― Leo Tolstoy
707. “Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad
moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments
too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
708. “Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her
little feet in their satin dancing shoes performed their role swiftly, lightly, as if they had wings,
while her face was radiant and ecstatic with happiness.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
709. “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 the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is
easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is
my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what
more can the heart of a man desire?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
710. “Eveyrbody thinks of changing Humanity..and nobody thinks of changing Himself...” ― Leo
Tolstoy
711. “And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars
on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and
the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular
harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny
tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as
he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at
speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and
impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail
and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body
seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and
blossomed into new life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
712. “No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of
all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple
reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God.” ― Leo Tolstoy
713.
“If you want to be Happy, BE” ― Leo Tolstoy
714. “He was much changed and grown even thinner since Pyotr Ivanovich had last seen him,
but, as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more dignified
than than when he was alive.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
715. “Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly
engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it
altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or
unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever
leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Childhood
716.
“To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.” ― Leo Tolstoy
717. “Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on
champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of
one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one
another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often
the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in discussion he
would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that
the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere
phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often
he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but
what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no
interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease
and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected
view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his
heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at,
and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as
every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without
complacency and sometimes angrily.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
718. “Life meanwhile, the actual life of men with their real interests of health and sickness, labour
and rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, affection, hatred, passion,
went its way, as always, independently, apart from the political amity or enmity of Napoleon
Bonaparte, and apart from all possible reforms.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
719. “So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death
of Ivan Ilych
720. “Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
historic, universal aims of humanity.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
721.
“Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul.” ― Leo Tolstoy
722. “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, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
723. “How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model of perfection
because Prince Andrew possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked,
and which might be best described as strength of will.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
724. “There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand,
and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important.” ― Leo Tolstoy
725. “he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness,
he occasionally spent nights at his desk.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
726. “There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all
around him are living in the same way.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
727. “Wait, wait,' he began, interrupting Oblonsky. 'Aristocratism, you say. But allow me to ask,
what makes up this aristocratism of Vronsky or whoever else it may be - such aristocratism
that I can be scorned? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father
crept out of nothing by wiliness, whose mother, God knows who she didn't have liaisons with...
No, excuse me, but I consider myself an aristocrat and people like myself, who can point to
three or four honest generations in their families' past, who had a high degree of education
(talent and intelligence are another thing), and who never lowered themselves before anyone,
never depended on anyone, as my father lived, and my grandfather. And I know many like
that. You find it mean that I count the trees in the forest, while you give away thirty thousand to
Ryabinin; but you'll have rent coming in and I don't know what else, while I won't, and so I
value what I've inherited and worked for... We're the aristocrats, and not someone who can
only exist on hand-outs from the mighty of this world and can be bought for twenty kopecks.
'But who are you attacking? I agree with you,' said Stepan Arkadyich sincerely and cheerfully,
though he felt Levin included him among those who could be bought for twenty kopecks.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
728. “War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that
and not play at war. Our attitude towards the fearful necessity of war ought to be stern. It boils
down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war and not a game.
Otherwise, war is a favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous...” ― Leo Tolstoy
729. “And what was worst of all was that *It* drew his attention to itself not in order to make him
take some action but only that he should look at *It*, look it straight in the face: look at it and
without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly.
And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations -- new screens -and new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately
fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It* penetrated them and nothing could veil
*It*.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
730. “We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however
trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions
if one's entire attention is devoted to it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
731. “The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's
life. Her love for Rostov was not then a source of torment or agitation to her. That love had by
then filled her whole soul and become an inseparable part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Of late Princess Marya was convinced- though she never clearly in so
many words admitted it to herself- that she loved and was beloved.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
732.
“intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party...” ― Leo Tolstoy
733.
“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?” ― Leo Tolstoy
734. “In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive. A
living man knows himself not otherwise than as wanting, that is, he is conscious of his will.
And his will, which constitutes the essence of his life, man is conscious of and cannot be
conscious of otherwise than as free.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
735. “Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one
advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics
had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were
held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed
them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of
themselves within him.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
736. “He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was
standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing
striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd
as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light
all around her.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
737. “The man who ten years earlier and one year later was considered a bandit and outlaw is
sent a two-day sail from France, to an island given into his possession, with his guards and
several million, which are paid to him for some reason.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
738. “Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are
engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is
far from Me.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu
739. “When the examination was over, the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskovya
Fyodorovna informed Ivan Ilyich that it must of course be as he liked, but she had sent today
for a celebrated doctor, and that he would examine him, and have a consultation with Mihail
Danilovich (that was the name of his regular doctor). 'Don't oppose it now, please. This I'm
doing entirely for my own sake,' she said ironically, meaning it to be understood that she was
doing it all for his sake, and was only saying this to give him no right to refuse her request. He
lay silent, knitting his brows. He felt that he was hemmed in by such a tangle of falsity that it
was hard to disentangle anything from it. Everything she did for him was entirely for her own
sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her
own sake as something so incredible that he would take it as meaning the opposite.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
740. “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, A Confession
741. “Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of
truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
742. “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; where it is absent, discussion is apt
to become worse than useless.” ― Leo Tolstoy
743. “Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbor and not to
throttle him?. They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told
me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered
the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction
of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others couldn't be
discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
744. “There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the
more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid
down for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in
time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a
man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he
has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
745.
“Why is gambling forbidden while women in costumes which evoke sensuality are not
forbidden? They are a thousand times more dangerous!” ― Leo Tolstoy
746. “Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position
not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel,
that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the
fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see
someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hear people
laughing.
Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who
composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into
another, but why this happens I don't know.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
747.
“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
748. “Faith is neither hope nor trust, but a particular spiritual state. Faith is man’s awareness that
his position in the world obliges him to perform certain actions. A person acts according to his
faith, not as the catechism says because he believes in things unseen as in things seen, nor
because he wishes to achieve things hoped for, but simply because having defined his
position in the world it is natural for him to act according to it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
and Other Religious Writings
749. “The main reason for the terrible cruelty between men today, apart from the absence
religion, is still the refined complexity of life which shields people from the consequences of
their actions. However cruel Attila, Genghis Khan and their followers may have been, the act
of killing people personally, face to face, must have been unpleasant: the wailing relatives and
the presence of the corpses. And thus their cruelty was restrained. Nowadays we kill people
through such a complex process of communication, and the consequences of our cruelty are
so carefully removed and concealed from us, that there is no restraint on the bestiality of the
action.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
750. “The Jew is that sacred being, who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire, and
has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of
which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.” ― Leo Tolstoy
751. “Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession and Other Religious Writings
752.
“But what can I do?' - I answer those who speak thus. - '... must I therefore not point out the
evil which I clearly, unquestionably see?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and
Non Violence
753. “The soul of man is the lamp of God,’ says a wise Jewish proverb. Man is a weak and
miserable creature when God’s light is not burning in his soul. But when it burns (and it only
burns in souls enlightened by religion), man becomes the most powerful creature in the world.
And it cannot be otherwise, for what then works in him is not his own strength, but the strength
of God.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
754. “But a man’s relationship to the world is determined not just by his intellect but by his
feelings and by his who aggregate of spiritual forces. However much one implies or explains to
a person that all that truly exists is no more than an idea, or that everything is made up of
atoms, or that the essence of life is substance or will, or that heat, light, movement and
electricity are only manifestations of one and the same energy; however much you explain this
to a man—a being who feels, suffers, rejoices, fears and hopes—it will not explain his place in
the universe.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
755.
“There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of
knowledge is mere amusement. —VISHNU PURANA,” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom:
Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
756. “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
757.
“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
758.
“If in Doubt, don't do it” ― Leo Tolstoy
759. “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
760. “A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it
is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
761. “The doctrine of Christ, which teaches love, humility, and self-denial, had always attracted
me. But I found a contrary law, both in the history of the past and in the present organization of
our lives – a law repugnant to my heart, my conscience, and my reason, but one that flattered
my animal instincts. I knew that if I accepted the doctrine of Christ, I should be forsaken,
miserable, persecuted, and sorrowing, as Christ tells us His followers will be. I knew that if I
accepted that law of man, I should have the approbation of my fellow-men; I should be at
peace and in safety; all possible sophisms would be at hand to quiet my conscience and I
should ‘laugh and be merry,’ as Christ says. I felt this, and therefore I avoided a closer
examination of the law of Christ, and tried to comprehend it in a way that should not prevent
my still leading my animal life. But, finding that impossible, I desisted from all attempts at
comprehension.” ― Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe
762. “The doctor arrived towards dinnertime and said, of course, that although recurring
phenomena might well elicit apprehension, nonetheless there was, strictly speaking, no
positive indication, yet since neither was there any contraindication, it might, on the one hand,
be supposed, but on the other hand it might also be supposed. And it was therefore necessary
to stay in bed, and although I don't like prescribing, nevertheless take this and stay in bed.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, The Devil
763. “Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever
he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the
district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing
itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely
necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and
diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself
more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of
what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much
better than before and that it was expanding more and more.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
764.
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
765. “My field was God’s earth. Wherever I ploughed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a
thing no man called his own. Labor was the only thing men called their own.” ― Leo Tolstoy
766.
“This foolish smile he could not forgive himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
767. “Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out
to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. 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
768. “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
769. “The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting,” he thought, “but as long as it
remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it;
and—whether one has fallen or resisted—one remains what one was before. But when that
same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and æsthetic feeling and demands our
worship—then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer
distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful!” ― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
770. “We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I say
quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug
between us.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata and Family Happiness
771. “Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks
772. “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
773. “I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
― Leo Tolstoy
774. “The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was
enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a
stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his
straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now
sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.” ― Leo Tolstoy
775. “He stepped down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, yet he saw
her as one sees the sun, without looking.” ― Leo Tolstoy
776. “Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive...and
strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet
joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a
cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life...he
began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of
true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself...wrote in
his diary, began afresh... ” ― Leo Tolstoy
777. “I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
778. “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
779. “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, Anna Karenina
780. “He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place, settled down, and
laid to rest.” ― Leo Tolstoy
781. “Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog
himself so as not to see the misery of his position.” ― Leo Tolstoy
782. “The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary of
hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting
for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were
already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
783.
“And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?” ― Leo Tolstoy
784. “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, The
Death of Ivan Ilych
785. “Why do i live? In the infinity of space, and infinity of time infinitely small particles mutate
with infinite complexity. When you understand the laws of these mutations, you'll understand
why you live.” ― Leo Tolstoy
786. “But it was not only by this feeling, as Varvara thought, that he was guided. Mingling with
his pride, with his need always to be first, was another motive, at which Varvara did not guess
- a truly religious urge. His disillusionment in Mary (his betrothed), whom he had imagined
such a saint, his feeling of outrage was so cruel that he sank into despair; and despair led him
- whither? To God, to the faith of his childhood, which had never lost its hold upon him.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Father Sergius
787. “My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons…” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
788.
“I have waked up.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
789. “Therein is the whole business of one’s life; to seek out and save in the soul that which is
perishing.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel in Brief
790. “If a man lives, then he believes in something. If he didn't believe that one must live for
something, then he wouldn't live. If he doesn't see and doesn't understand the illusoriness of
the finite, he believes in the infinite; if he does understand the illusoriness of the finite, he must
believe in the infinite without which one cannot live.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
791. “The next Post brought a reply from the starets, who wrote to him that the cause of all his
trouble lay in his pride. His Wrathful Outburst, the starets explained, had come about because
it was not for God that he had humbled himself, rejecting honours and advancement in the
church - not for God, but to satisfy his own pride, to be able to tell himself how virtuous he
was, seeking nothing for self. That was why he had not been able to endure the Superior's
conduct. Because he felt that he had given up everything for God, and now he was being put
on display, like some strange beast.
"If it were for God you had given up advancement, you would have let it pass.
worldly pride is still alive in you.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Father Sergius
792. “In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he was just what he used
to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed occupied not with what was before his
eyes but with something special of his own. The difference between his former and present
self was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to him, he had
puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At
present he still forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but
he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what was before him
and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.
Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been
inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and sympathy
for others shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as contented as
he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.” ― Leo Tolstoy
793. “In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat
him cordially.” ― Leo Tolstoy
794. “[Pierre] involuntarily started comparing these two men, so different and at the same time
so similar, because of the love he had for both of them, and because both had lived and both
had died.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
795. “False faith is the major cause of most of our misfortunes. The purpose of a human life is to
bring the irrational beginning of our life to a rational beginning. In order to succeed in this, two
things are important: (1) to see all irrational, unwise things in life and direct your attention to
them and study them; (2) to understand the possibility of a rational, wise life. The major
purpose of all teachers of mankind was the understanding of the irrational and rational
beginnings in our life. We should be ready to change our views at any time, and slough off
prejudices, and live with an open and receptive mind. A sailor who sets the same sails all the
time, without making changes when the wind changes, will never reach his harbor. —HENRY
GEORGE Accept the teaching of Christ as it is, clear and simple; then you will see that we live
among big lies.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul,
Written and Se
796. “• A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go a thousand
miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the end of those thousand miles.
One must have the prospect of a promised land to have the strength to move.” ― Leo Tolstoy
797. “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
798. “wisdom needs no violence...As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile! We play at
magnanimity and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that
she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce…If there was none of
this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only when it was worth while going to certain
death, as it is now. Then there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended
Michael Ivanovich.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
799. “He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had
long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed
to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything,
simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to
be quite the opposite.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
800. “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.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
801. “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
802. “Lord have mercy! Pardon and help us!" he repeated the words that suddenly and
unexpectedly sprang to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated those words not with his lips
only. At that instant he knew that neither his doubts nor the impossibility of believing with his
reason- of which he was conscious- all prevented his appealing to God. It all flew off like dust.
To whom should he appeal, if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love,
to be?” ― Leo Tolstoy
803. “Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,’ he thought. And suddenly at this
thought of death a whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his
imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the
days when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for
himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he
was billeted with Nesvitsky and began to walk up and down before it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
804. “He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied
him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered
everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that his undertaking was the
only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining
strength.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
805.
“[from Some words about 'War and Peace']
For a historian considering the achievement of a certain aim, there are heroes; for the artist
treating of a man's relation to all sides of life there cannot and should not be heroes, but there
should be men.
[...]
The historian has to deal with the results of an event, the artist with the fact of the event. An
historian in describing a battle says: 'The left flank of such and such an army was advanced to
attack such and such a village and drove out the enemy, but was compelled to retire; then the
cavalry, which was sent to attack, overthrew...' and so on. But these words have no meaning
for the artist and do not actually touch on the event itself. Either from his own experience, or
from the letters, memoirs, and accounts, the artist realizes a certain event to himself, and very
often (to take the example of a battle) the deductions the historian permits himself to make as
to the activity of such and such armies prove to be the very opposite of the artist's deductions.
The difference of the results arrived at is also to be explained by the sources from which the
two draw their information. For the historian (to keep to the case of a battle) the chief source is
found in the reports of the commanding officers and the commander-in-chief. The artist can
draw nothing from such sources; they tell him nothing and explain nothing to him. More than
that: the artist turns away from them as he finds inevitable falsehood in them. To say nothing
of the fact that after any battle the two sides nearly always describe it in quite contradictory
ways, in every description of a battle there is a necessary lie, resulting from the need of
describing in a few words the actions of thousands of men spread over several miles, and
subject to most violent moral excitement under the influence of fear, shame and death.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
806. “We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we do
them” ― Leo Tolstoy
807.
“[from Some words about 'War and Peace']
In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried away by
passions; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes,
where were in some instances even more refined than now. If we have come to believe in the
perversity and coarse violence of that period, that is only because the traditions, memoirs,
stories, and novels that have been handed to us, record for the most part exceptional cases of
violence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that period was
turbulence, is as unjust as it would before a man, seeing nothing but the tops of trees beyond
a hill, to conclude that there was nothing to be found in that locality but trees.” ― Leo Tolstoy
808.
“But what is chance? What is genius?
The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and therefore cannot be
defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not
know why a certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I
talk about chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary human
agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of genius.
To a heard of rams, that ram the herdsman dries each evening into a special enclosure to
feed, and that becomes twice as fat as the others, must seem to be a genius.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
809. “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, Anna Karenina
810. “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, Anna Karenina
811. “How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it,
there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I'd be, if I could say now: Lord, have mercy on
me! ... But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an indefinable, unfathomable power, which I not
only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words - the great all or nothing...or it is that
God of whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain,
except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something
incomprehensible but most important!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
812. “Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of
deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this
date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with
his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself.
All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all
the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he
might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the
knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out
the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of
being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a wornout woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely
a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out
quite the other way.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
813. “If you turn to a branch of those sciences that try to give a solution to the questions of life-to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology--there you will find an astounding poverty of
thought, a very great lack of clarity, completely unjustified claims to answer questions that lie
outside their subject and never-ending contradictions between one thinker and others, and
even within himself.
If you turn to a branch of the sciences that is not concerned with solving the questions of life
but answers its own scientific, specialized questions, then you are captivated by the power of
human intellect but you know in advance that there are no answers to the questions of life.
These sciences directly ignore the questions of life.
They say, "We have no answers to 'What are you?' and 'Why do you live?' and are not
concerned with this; but if you need to know the laws of light, of chemical compounds, the
laws of the development of organisms, if you need to know the laws of bodies and their forms
and the relation of numbers and quantities, if you need to know the laws of your own mind, to
all that we have clear, precise, and unquestionable answers.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
814. “Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart
he knew he was dying, but not only was he unaccustomed to the thought, he simply did not
and could not grasp it.
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: ‘Caius is a man, men are mortal,
therefore Caius is mortal,’ had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but it
certainly didn’t apply to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly
correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite separate from all
others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with
toys, a coachman and a nanny, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and
delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth.
What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had
Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle for Caius? Had he
noted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could
Caius preside at session as he did?
Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but as for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych,
with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to
die. That would be too terrible.
Such was his feeling.” ― Leo Tolstoy
815. “[...] but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed petty and insignificant in
comparison with the darkness that overshadowed all existence, so now they seemed as petty
and insignificant in comparison with the brilliant sunshine in which the future was bathed. He
went on with his work but now he felt that the centre of gravity of his attention had shifted,
making him look at his work quite differently and with greater clarity. Formerly this work had
been an escape from life: he used to feel that without it life would be too gloomy. Now he
needed it so that life might not be too uniformly bright.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
816. “At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that
both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, 'at one time a freethinker was a man who had been
brought up in the conception of religion, law, and morality, who reached freethought only after
conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up
without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities
existed. They grow up in ideas of negation in everything -- in other words, utter savages.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
817. “So they are even more frightened than we are,' he thought. 'Why, is this all that's meant by
heroism? And did I do it for the sake of my country? And was he to blame with his dimple and
his blue eyes? How frightened he was! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I kill
him? My hand trembled. And they have given me the St. George's Cross. I can't make it out, I
can't make it out!” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
818.
“Add your light to the sum of light.” ― Leo Tolstoy
819. “They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful," he began with
a smile. "But I'll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy
to spin something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would
have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale… ” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
820. “Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”
― Leo Tolstoy
821. “It is said that one swallow does not make a summer, but can it be that because one
swallow does not make a summer another swallow, sensing and anticipating summer, must
not fly? If every blade of grass waited similarly summer would never occur. And it is the same
with establishing the Kingdom of God: we must not think about whether we are the first or the
thousandth swallow.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
822. “With 6 children Darya Alexandrovna could not be calm. One got sick, another might get
sick, a third lacked something, a fourth showed signs of bad character, and so on, and so on.
Rarely, rarely would there be short periods of calm but these troubles and anxieties were for
Darya Alexandroyna the only possible happiness. Had it not been for them, she would have
remained alone with her thoughts of her husband, who did not love her. But besides that,
however painful the mother's fear of illnesses, the illnesses themselves, and the distress at
seeing signs of bad inclinations in her children, the children themselves repaid her griefs with
small joys. These joys were so small that they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in
her bad moments she saw only griefs, only sand; but there were also good moments, when
she saw only joys, only gold.
Now, in her country solitude, she was more aware of these joys. Often, looking at them, she
made every possible effort to convince herself that she was mistaken, that as a mother she
was partial to her children; all the same, she could not but tell herself that she had lovely
children, all 6 of them, each in a different way, but such as rarely happens - and she was
happy in them in them and proud of them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
823. “She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
824. “No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she
could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
825. “A thought can advance your life in the right direction only when it answers questions which
were asked by your soul. A thought which was first borrowed from someone else and then
accepted by your mind and memory does not really much influence your life, and sometimes
leads you in the wrong direction. Read less, study less, but think more.
Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which
you really need and which you really want to know.” ― Leo Tolstoy
826. “O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of
you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as
children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds,
and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything
that is, and find all is well with time and with you. KRISHNA.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a
Hindu
827. “As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her
upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of
beauty.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
828. “The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the
more their poverty will increase.” ― Leo Tolstoy
829. “At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as
possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind.
Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and
abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not
know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is
wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
830. “But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression of her eyes; the expression that
came into them when she was not thinking of herself. As is the case with everyone, her face
assumed an affected, unnatural, ugly expression as soon as she looked in the looking glass.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
831. “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, War and Peace
832. “Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder- und Hausmärchen) is a collection of
German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers
Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales (German: Grimms
Märchen).” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
833. “The younger sister was piqued, and in turn disparaged the life of a tradesman, and stood
up for that of a peasant.
“I would not change my way of life for yours,” said she. “We may live roughly, but at least we
are free from anxiety. You live in better style than we do, but though you often earn more than
you need, you are very likely to lose all you have. You know the proverb, ‘Loss and gain are
brothers twain.’ It often happens that people who are wealthy one day are begging their bread
the next. Our way is safer. Though a peasant’s life is not a fat one, it is a long one. We shall
never grow rich, but we shall always have enough to eat.”
The elder sister said sneeringly:
“Enough? Yes, if you like to share with the pigs and the calves! What do you know of elegance
or manners! However much your good man may slave, you will die as you are living-on a dung
heap-and your children the same.”
“Well, what of that?” replied the younger. “Of course our work is rough and coarse. But, on the
other hand, it is sure; and we need not bow to any one. But you, in your towns, are surrounded
by temptations; today all may be right, but tomorrow the Evil One may tempt your husband
with cards, wine, or women, and all will go to ruin. Don’t such things happen often enough?” ―
Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories
834. “Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance, 'Is this what I think?' "I
understand,' she said, blushing. "What is this word?' he said, pointing to the "n' that signified
the word "never." .... She wrote: t, I, c,g,n,o,a.” ― Leo Tolstoy
835.
“- Every girl is proud of an offer, Yes, every girl, but not she” ― Leo Tolstoy
836. “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, War and Peace
837. “Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force. And that Death which was present in this dear brother (who, waking up, moaned and by
habit called indiscriminately on God and on the devil) was not so far away as it hitherto
seemed to be. It was within himself to- he felt it. If not today, then tomorrow or thirty years
hence, was it not all the same? But what that inevitable Death was, he not only did not know,
not only had never considered, but could not and dared not consider.” ― Leo Tolstoy
838. “...there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness
of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished... the most solemn mystery in the
world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of suspense
and softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but grew more intense. No
one slept.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
839. “Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the
room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a
serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that
moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that anyone can produce
at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand times leave us
cold, and the thousand and first time they set us thrilling and weeping.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
840.
“Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
841. “She danced the dance so well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who
handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she
laughed as she watched that slender and graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet,
belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya
and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and
Peace
842. “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, War and Peace
843. “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, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
844. “This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by
words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things
each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to
excite and irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he
took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men's
opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him
an amused and gentle smile.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
845. “Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's
minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike...What Pierre chiefly
desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself.” ―
Leo Tolstoy
846. “But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should
have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English
policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections
between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's
wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder
the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
847. “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, Family Happiness
848. “It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince
Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her
feel of worship and awe of God.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
849. “With the smugness of an end man on parade, he bounced along on his sinewy legs,
effortlessly marching to attention, floating with a lightness of step remarkably different from the
heavy tread of the soldiers keeping time with him. Down by his thigh he carried, unsheathed, a
thin little sword – it was a small curved sabre, for ceremonial use only – and he looked and
turned sideways to the commander and back to the men behind, without straining his big
powerful frame or getting out of step. He seemed to strive with every fibre of his soul to march
past his commander with maximum style, and his strong sense of doing this well made him a
happy man. ‘Left . . . left . . . left . . .’ he seemed to be mouthing to himself at each alternate
step, and that was the rhythm to which the solid wall of military men, weighed down by packs
and guns, advanced; each face was different in its stern concentration, and each one of these
hundreds of soldiers seemed to mouth his own ‘Left . . . left . . . left . . .’ at each alternate step”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
850. “But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the
Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had
not come to pass, these hints would have been forgotten, as thousands and millions of
suggestions and supposition are now forgotten that were current at the period, but have been
shown by time to be unfounded and so have been consigned to oblivion.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War
and Peace
851. “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. And for him, living in a certain
society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of
mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a
reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his
circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer
accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong,
and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. 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. The liberal party
said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the
barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short
service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the
object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so
very amusing in this world. And with all this, 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. 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. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that
it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow
up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the
revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic
revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read
another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some
innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the
drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed,
and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was
embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household.
He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need
have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a
situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical
gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up,
shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled
joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile
was evoked by a good digestion.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
852. “Although on a conscious level a man lives for himself, he is actually being used for the
attainment of humanity's historical aims. A deed once done becomes irrevocable, and any
action comes together over time with millions of actions performed by other people to create
historical significance.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
853. “Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the
Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up
and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast
away.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
854. “...but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to
such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral
beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood
them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature
with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but
with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part
of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
855. “Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyes gazed wonderingly
upon the world, whose horizon hides this real life from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou
hast prayed for, demanded as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I am
that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years. Sometimes I lay in thee
grieving because thou didst not recognize me; sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes,
and extended my arms calling thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that
thou shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Letter to a Hindu
856. “Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He knew so well this feeling of Levin's, knew that for him all the
girls in the world were divided into two sorts: one sort was all the girls in the world except her,
and these girls had all human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls; the other sort was her
alone, with no weaknesses and higher than everything human.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
857. “Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do
not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself. —HENRI AMIEL” ― Leo
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
858. “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, Anna Karenina
859. “Since the moment when, at the sigh of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first
time looked at the questions of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called
them...he had been less horrified by death than by life without the least knowledge of whence
it came, what it is for, why, and what it is. Organisms, their destruction, the indestructibility of
matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development--the terms that had superseded
these beliefs--were very useful for mental purposes; but they gave no guidance for life, and
Levin suddenly felt like a person who has exchanged a thick fur coat fora muslin garment and
who, being out in the frost for the first time, becomes clearly convinced, not by arguments, but
with the whole of his being that he is as good as naked and that he must inevitably perish
miserably. From that moment, without thinking about it and though he continued living as he
had done heretofore, Levin never ceased to feel afraid of his ignorance...What astounded and
upset him most in his connection, was that the majority of those in his set and of his age, did
not see anything to be distressed about, and were quite contented and tranquil. So that,
besides the principal question, Levin was tormented by other questions: were these people
sincere? Were they not pretending? Or did they understand, possibly in some different or
clearer way than he, the answers science gives to the questions he was concerned with?” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
860. “What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of
course.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks
861. “A man is never such an egoist as at moments of spiritual exaltation, when it seems to him
that there is nothing in the world more splendid and fascinating than himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy
862.
“God knows of love” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
863. “Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of willbut he serves as an
unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once
committed is irrecvocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others,
has an historical value... 'The hearts of kinds are in the hand of God.' The king is the slave of
history... Every action that seems to them an act of their own freewill, is in an historical sense
not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all
eternity.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
864.
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.” ― Leo Tolstoy
865. “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, A Confession
866. “Only during a period of war does it become obvious how millions of people can be
manipulated. People, millions of people, are filled with pride while doing things which those
same people actually consider stupid, evil, dangerous, painful, and criminal, and they strongly
criticize these things—but continue doing them.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily
Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
867. “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, Anna Karenina
868. “Indeed, a bird is made in such a way that it can fly, gather food and build a nest, and when
I see a bird doing these things I rejoice. Goats, hares and wolves are made in order to eat,
multiply and feed their families, and when they do this I feel quite sure that they are happy and
that their lives are meaningful. What should a man do? He too must work for his existence,
just as the animals do, but with the difference that he will perish if he does it alone, for he must
work for an existence, not just for himself, but for everyone. And when he does this I feel quite
sure that he is happy and that his life has meaning. And what had I been doing for all those
thirty years of conscious life? Far from working for an existence for everyone, I had not even
done so for myself. I had lived as a parasite and when I asked myself why I lived, I received
the answer: for nothing. If the meaning of human existence lies in working to procure it I had
spent thirty years attempting, not to procure it, but to destroy it for myself and for others. How
then could I get any answer other than that my life is evil and meaningless? Indeed it was evil
and meaningless.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
869. “What are these deaths and revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in
the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague
hope of finding God. I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What,
then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without whom there could
be no life." To know God and to liVe come to one and the same thing. God is life.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, A Confession
870. “I recalled the hundreds of occasions when life had died within me only to be reborn. I
remembered that I only lived during those times when I believed in God. Then, as now, I said
to myself: I have only to believe in God in order to live. I have only to disbelieve in Him, or to
forget Him, in order to die. What are these deaths and rebirths? It is clear that I do not live
when I lose belief in God’s existence, and I should have killed myself long ago, were it not for
a dim hope of finding Him. What then is it you are seeking? a voice exclaimed inside me.
There He is! He, without whom it is impossible to live. To know God and to live are one and
the same thing. God is life.
‘Live in search of God and there will be no life without God!’ And more powerfully than ever
before everything within and around me came to light, and the light has not deserted me
since.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
871. “I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed men in war and
challenged men to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labour of the
peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery,
adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder--there was no crime I did not commit, and
in spite of that people praised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider
me to be a comparatively moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness, and pride. In my writings I did the
same as in my life. to get fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to
hide the good and to display the evil. and I did so. How often in my writings I contrived to hide
under the guise of indifference, or even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness
which gave meaning to my life! And I succeeded in this and was praised.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Confession
872. “Therefore, all these causes-billions of causes-coincided so as to bring about what
happened. And consequently none of them was the exclusive cause of the event, but the
event had to take place simply because it had to take place.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
873. “Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the
same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does it lead
to? At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant questions. I thought that it
was all well known, and that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution it would not cost me
much effort; just at present I had no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be able to find
the answer. The questions however began to repeat themselves frequently, and to demand
replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always falling on one place they ran
together into one black blot. Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal
internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no
attention; then these signs reappear more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted
period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can look round, what he
took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to him than anything else in
the world -- it is death! That is what happened to me.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
874. “Why do you need to be like anyone? You're good as you are,” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
875. “Yet time and again, from different approaches, I kept coming to the same conclusion, that I
could not have come into the world without any cause, reason, or meaning; that I could not be
the fledgeling fallen from the nest that I felt myself to be. If I lie on my back crying in the tall
grass, like a fledgeling, it is because I know that my mother brought me into the world, kept me
warm, fed me and loved me. But where is she, that mother? If I am abandoned, then who has
abandoned me? I cannot hide myself from the fact that someone who loved me gave birth to
me. Who is this someone? Again, God.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious
Writings
876. “Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.” ― Leo
Tolstoy
877. “We should always try to find those things which do not separate us from other people but
which unite us. To work against each other, to be angry and turn your back on each other, is
to work against nature. —MARCUS AURELIUS” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily
Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
878. “And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grieg, and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been in
darkness, sputtered, grew dim, and went out forever.” ― Leo Tolstoy
879. “There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if
everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
880. “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, A Confession
881. “Higher and higher receded the sky, wider and wider spread the streak of dawn, whiter
grew the pallid silver of the dew, more lifeless the sickle of the moon...” ― Leo Tolstoy, Strider
- The Story of a Horse
882. “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, War and Peace
883. “Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of
slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labor of others and
should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and
arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure
themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because
people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labor of others.” ― Leo Tolstoy
884. “And I, too, am the same… only there is no love in my heart, or desire for love, no interest
in work, not contentment in myself. And how remote and impossible my old religious
enthusiasms seem now… and my former abounding life! What once seemed so plain and right
– that happiness lay in living for others – is unintelligible now. Why live for others, when life
has not attractions even for oneself?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness and Other Stories
885. “One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the
dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?--there beyond
that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear
and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will
have to find out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side
of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such
excitedly animated and healthy men.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
886. “There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is,
forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could
not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the
dream of daily life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
887. “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, The Kreutzer Sonata
888. “Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and
he could think of nothing to be done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we
got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I
let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad HER having been
a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's
governess. But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland
and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst
of it all is that she's already… it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is
to be done?” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
889. “... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for
happiness rests only on oneself.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
890. “Then as now much time was spent arguing about the rights of women, husband-and-wife
relationships and freedom and rights within marriage, but Natasha had no interest in any such
questions.
Questions like these, then as now, existed exclusively for people who see marriage only in
terms of satisfaction given and received by the married couple, though this is only one
principle of married life rather than its overall meaning, which lies in the family.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
891. “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, Master and Man
892. “One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault,
which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I
die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking
anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
893.
“She did worse than break the law, she broke the rules” ― Leo Tolstoy
894. “But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karinina
895. “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
896. “He got up, wishing to go around, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox right over Helene,
behind her back. Helene moved forward so as to make room and, smiling, glanced around. As
always at soirees, she was wearing a gown in the fashion of the time, quite open in front and
back. Her bust, which had always looked like marble to Pierre, was now such a short distance
from him that he could involuntarily make out with his nearsighted eyes the living loveliness of
her shoulders and neck, and so close to his lips that he had only to lean forward a little to
touch her. He sensed the warmth of her body, the smell of her perfume, and the creaking of
her corset as she breathed. He saw not her marble beauty, which made one with her gown, he
saw and sensed all the loveliness of her body, which was merely covered by clothes. And
once he had seen it, he could not see otherwise, as we cannot return to a once-exposed
deception.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
897. “So long as people do not consider all men as their brothers and do not consider human life
as the most sacred thing, which rather than destroy they must consider it their first and
foremost duty to support; that is so long as people do not behave towards one another in a
religious manner, they will always ruin one another’s lives for the sake of personal gain.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
898. “To claim that the supernatural and irrational form the basic characteristics of religion is
much the same as noticing only the rotten apples and then claiming that the basic features of
the fruit named apple are a flaccid bitterness and a harmful effect produced in the stomach.”
899. ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings
900. “Kind people help each other even without noticing that they are doing so, and evil people
act against each other on purpose. —CHINESE PROVERB” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of
Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
901. “In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete
discord between the spouses or loving harmony.” ― Leo Tolstoy
902. “The chief reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he
could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his selfesteem. He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed
man, and nothing else... He was equable and not cringing with his superiors, was free and
ingratiating in his behavior with his equals, and was contemptuously indulgent with his
inferiors... for this prince he was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude to
him revolted him.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
903. “Pierre’s heart thrilled to these words as he gazed with shining eyes into the mason’s face.
He listened without interrupting or asking any questions, and with all his soul he believed what
this stranger was saying to him. Whether he was believing rational arguments coming from the
mason, or trusting more like a child in the persuasive intonation, the sense of authority, the
sincerity of the words spoken, the quavering voice that sometimes seemed on the verge of
breaking down, or the gleaming aged eyes grown old in that conviction, or the tranquillity, the
certainty and true sense of vocation radiating from the old man’s whole being and striking
Pierre very forcibly, given the state of his own debasement and despair – whatever was
happening to him, he longed to believe with all his soul, and he did believe and he felt a joyful
sense of calm, renewal and return to life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
904. “Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis,
which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a
way to man’s consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it
was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against
deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men
to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.” ― Leo Tolstoy
905. “Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But that's just the aim of civilization—to
make everything a source of enjoyment.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
906. “The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days.
The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the
housekeeper, and wrote” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
907. “It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences.
The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the
knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop
you from understanding the basic rules of life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily
Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
908. “We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish
the Soul, Written and Se
909. “Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
910. “Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for
him--and intelligent Russian--the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
911. “after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on
earth” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
912. “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, Father Sergius
913. “Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere.” ― Leo Tolstoy
914. “I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry
discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the
holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my
own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason
why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything
that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has
the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it." - Levin” ― Leo
Tolstoy
915. “I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon.
Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly now,"
he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your advice.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
916. “The law of God is not to return evil for evil; indeed, if you try in this way to stamp out
wickedness it will come upon you all the stronger. It is not difficult for you to kill the man, but
his blood will surely stain your own soul. You may think you have killed a bad man--that you
have gotten rid of evil--but you will soon find out that the seeds of still greater wickedness
have been planted within you.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Eleven Stories
917. “I do not live when I loose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed
myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek
Him” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
918. “Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an
impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on
him gave him happiness and pride.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
919.
“Everything that I Know, I Know Only Because I Love…” ― Leo Tolstoy
920. “Our existence is now so entirely in contradiction with the doctrine of Jesus, that only with
the greatest difficulty can we understand its meaning. We have been so deaf to the rules of life
that he has given us, to his explanations,—not only when he commands us not to kill, but
when he warns us against anger, when he commands us not to resist evil, to turn the other
cheek, to love our enemies; we are so accustomed to speak of a body of men especially
organized for murder, as a Christian army, we are so accustomed to prayers addressed to the
Christ for the assurance of victory, we who have made the sword, that symbol of murder, an
almost sacred object (so that a man deprived of this symbol, of his sword, is a dishonored
man); we are so accustomed, I say, to this, that the words of Jesus seem to us compatible
with war. We say, "If he had forbidden it, he would have said so plainly." We forget that Jesus
did not foresee that men having faith in his doctrine of humility, love, and fraternity, could ever,
with calmness and premeditation, organize themselves for the murder of their brethren.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, My Religion
921. “Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. "Yes, it was nice,
very nice. There was a great deal more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words,
or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake." And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside
one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt
about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on
gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out
his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his
bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's
room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.” ―
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
922.
“If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
923. “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, What Is Religion? and Other New
Articles and Letters
924. “War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
925. “the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies
in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which
should flow from it—a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to
England and America alike.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu
926. “Love them that hate you, but you can't love those you hate.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina
927. “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, Anna Karenina
928. “When Mother smiled, no matter how nice her face had been before, it became
incomparably nicer and everything around seemed to brighten up as well.” ― Leo Tolstoy,
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
929. “I consider jealousy a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be
influenced by it.” ― Leo Tolstoy
930.
“I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.” ― Leo Tolstoy
931. “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
932. “To improve ourselves, to move toward that goal, perfection, that puts no less a demand on
us for being unattainable, requires solitude, removal from the concerns of everyday life. And
yet constant solitude renders self-improvement impossible, if not pointless. A balance must be
struck between meditating in solitude and then applying this to your everyday life.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
933. “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, Anna Karenina
934.
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
935. “We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and
condemning the thief or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life brings
about...We are all brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from needy
laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle. We are all brothers, but I take a
stipend for preaching a false Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which
only serves to hinder men from understanding true Christianity.” ― Leo Tolstoy
936. “Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, War and Peace
937. “The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember
things that have never happened.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
938. “He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he
said was very witty or very stupid.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace: With bonus material from
Give War and Peace A Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman
939. “In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
940. “Levin had often noticed in arguments between even the most intelligent people that after
enormous efforts, an enormous number of logical subtleties and words, the arguers would
finally come to the awareness that what they had spent so long struggling to prove to each
other had been known to them long, long before, from the beginning of the argument, but that
they loved different things and therefore did not want to name what they loved, so as not to be
challenged. He had often felt that sometimes during an argument you would understand what
your opponent loves, and suddenly come to love the same thing yourself, and agree all at
once, and then all reasonings would fall away as superfluous; and sometimes it was the other
way round: you would finally say what you yourself love, for the sake of which you are
inventing your reasonings, and if you happened to say it well and sincerely, the opponent
would suddenly agree and stop arguing. That was the very thing he wanted to say.” ― Leo
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
941. “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, Where Love Is, There God Is Also
942. “As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as spirit, will, freedom,
essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he
seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning,
and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed
definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it
became clear that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from
anything in life more important than reason.” ― Leo Tolstoy
943. “Neglecting your health can prevent you from serving people, and too much attention to
your body and its health can bring the same results. In order to find the middle way, you
should take care of your body only to the extent that doing so helps you to serve others, and
does not stop you from serving them. No illness can prevent a person from what he has to do.
If you cannot work, then give your love to people. Illnesses of the mind are much more
dangerous than illnesses of the body. —MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO” ― Leo Tolstoy, A
Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se
944. “I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed
shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady
passionless course of time.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
945. “There was no solution but that usual solution which life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer one must live in the needs of one that - that is,
forget oneself.” ― Leo Tolstoy
946. “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, Kreutzer Sonata and Family Happiness
947.
“Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
948. “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.― Leo Tolstoy
949. “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
950. “Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of
history think important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the
domain of feelings.” ― Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the
Soul, Written and Se
951. “Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were spent in curing
debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist, whereas now all efforts are
employed, not in extirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of
the consequences.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata and Family Happiness