“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his
wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. "Another's wife is a swan, but one's
own is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other
because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such
circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke
was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of
Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that
they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only the griefs,
only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
―
Leo Tolstoy
*"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known
happiness!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite
ordinary occurrence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that
there is such a thing as death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full. 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 is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent”
―
Leo Tolstoy
