“The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change
of life or by a change of conscience.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess
even to himself, though it was so strong that now his passion was even doing battle with his
love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly
business. We must certainly accept, and we will.”
―
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
“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is
continuous.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if
everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“at one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of
religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a
new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that
there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you
see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to
work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and
you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the
literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks
he's finished.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the
blame for everybody else's mistakes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
