“The most mentally deranged people are those who see in others indications of insanity
they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy.”
―
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
“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of
goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious
part in it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is said that one swallow does not make a summer, but can it be that because one
swallow does not make a summer another swallow, sensing and anticipating summer, must
not fly? If every blade of grass waited similarly summer would never occur. And it is the same
with establishing the Kingdom of God: we must not think about whether we are the first or the
thousandth swallow.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east
to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
to the west slaying their fellows.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I
cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an
infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and
that bubble am I.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and
having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. It
seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in
ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in
horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service.
'Nothing is without consequence, and nothing is important: it's all the same in the end. The
thing to do is to save myself from it all as best I can,' thought Pierre. Not to see IT, that terrible
IT.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive...and
strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet
joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a
cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life...he
began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of
true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself...wrote in
his diary, began afresh... ”
―
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
“What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or
endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and
always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a
dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others
present it would be still worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I say
quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug
between us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
