“In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat
him cordially.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he
said was very witty or very stupid.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire
and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs,
a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. “And why did I come here?” he
wondered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed
to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass,
young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and sendout living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten.
The wound was healing from inside.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Faith is neither hope nor trust, but a particular spiritual state. Faith is man’s awareness that
his position in the world obliges him to perform certain actions. A person acts according to his
faith, not as the catechism says because he believes in things unseen as in things seen, nor
because he wishes to achieve things hoped for, but simply because having defined his
position in the world it is natural for him to act according to it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves
must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe
that in anyone's time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
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
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one
advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics
had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were
held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed
them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of
themselves within him.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond
remedy, misfortune his own fault.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all
satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the
unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement
to rulers chosen by the masses.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
