“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like
the sun, even without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I?
What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there
was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all
an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will
die and learn everything--or stop asking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the
most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced
that no religion is no longer needed.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his
newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's
life. Her love for Rostov was not then a source of torment or agitation to her. That love had by
then filled her whole soul and become an inseparable part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Of late Princess Marya was convinced- though she never clearly in so
many words admitted it to herself- that she loved and was beloved.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never
could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be
able to leave it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“According to the biblical tradition the absence of work -- idleness -- was a condition of the
first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in
fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread
by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both
idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man
could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he
would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such
state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men -- the military
class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of
military service, and it always will.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man of the present day, whether he believes in the divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to
see that to assist in the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in taking from a
poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle
officials, who live in luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some man we
have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the streets; or in plundering and
butchering in war; or in inculcating savage and idolatrous superstitious in the place of the lawof Christ; or in impounding the cow found on one's land, though it belongs to a man who has
no land; or to cheat the workman in a factory, by imposing fines for accidentally spoiled
articles; or making a poor man pay double the value for anything simply because he is in the
direst poverty;--not a man of the present day can fail to know that all these actions are base
and disgraceful, and that they need not do them. They all know it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And what is justice? The princess thought of that proud word 'justice'. All the complex laws
of man centered for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught
us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do
with justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“wisdom needs no violence...As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile! We play at
magnanimity and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that
she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce...If there was none of
this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only when it was worth while going to certain
death, as it is now. Then there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended
Michael Ivanovich.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds
no outlet in our quiet life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
