“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
―
Leo Tolstoy
Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in
order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be
qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so
on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more
often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be
true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet
we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers;
the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows
swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same
with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests
one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil
- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You're not racing?" joked the officer.
"Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully.
And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever
phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on
champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of
one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one
another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often
the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in discussion he
would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that
the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere
phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often
he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but
what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no
interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease
and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected
view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his
heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at,
and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as
every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without
complacency and sometimes angrily.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive,
and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained
unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not
formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most
intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt,
what is laid before him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for
which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was
far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had
really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end
everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it
was terrible but true”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another
sentiment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie
such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is
easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in
fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from
me....And now the work's done, there's only death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy