“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
“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the
earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier,
because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“...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
“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
“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
“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that
there is such a thing as death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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 atpeace, 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
“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
“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
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
