“I don't give a damn unless I'm fond of a person;but I'd sacrifice my life for those I am fond
of; the rest I'd throttle if they stood in my way...And you may not believe me but if I still set a
value on life it is only because I still hope one day to meet such a heavenly creature who will
regenarate me, purify me and elevate me. But you don't understand that.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his
own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry
discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the
holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my
own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason
why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything
that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has
the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it." - Levin”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all
around him are living in the same way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and
the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do
not see in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree
of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Does it ever happen to you," Natasha said to her brother, when they had settled in the
sitting room, "does it ever happen to you that you feel there's nothing more - nothing; that
everything good has already happened? And it's not really boring, but sad?"
"As if it doesn't!" he said. "It's happened to me that everything's fine, everybody's merry, and it
suddenly comes into my head that it's all tiresome and we all ought to die....”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of
insanity they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are these deaths and revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in
the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague
hope of finding God. I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What,
then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without whom there could
be no life." To know God and to liVe come to one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness”
―
Leo Tolstoy
