“Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while
rationally justifying the other's activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that
the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond
remedy, misfortune his own fault.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then as now much time was spent arguing about the rights of women, husband-and-wife
relationships and freedom and rights within marriage, but Natasha had no interest in any such
questions.
Questions like these, then as now, existed exclusively for people who see marriage only in
terms of satisfaction given and received by the married couple, though this is only one
principle of married life rather than its overall meaning, which lies in the family.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself,
there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such
conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem
to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to
heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually
encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves
very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and
morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
