“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
“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
“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of
truth.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But live while you live, tomorrow you die...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
