“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
“I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is,
everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die
means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and
impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she
could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of
history think important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the
domain of feelings.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning,
'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
