“What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know...I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own
body.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as
usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants,
yet this one won't submit.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“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
