“The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in
words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people,
appears to be impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or
desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One need only posit some threat to the public tranquility and any action can be justified.
All the horrors of the reign of terror were based on concern for public tranquility.” ―
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite
qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like
that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is
narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull,
now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human
quality and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes
unlike himself—while still remaining the same man.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope,
light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible".
Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
