“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
“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
“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
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“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 banningthereby 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
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One might murder and steal and yet be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive
―
Leo Tolstoy
