“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for
happiness rests only on oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The 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
“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made
(Latin).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
