“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force. And that Death which was present in this dear brother (who, waking up, moaned and by
habit called indiscriminately on God and on the devil) was not so far away as it hitherto
seemed to be. It was within himself to- he felt it. If not today, then tomorrow or thirty years
hence, was it not all the same? But what that inevitable Death was, he not only did not know,
not only had never considered, but could not and dared not consider.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing."
"Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her
bosom.
"So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day
and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor
for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to
torture ourselves and one another?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and
perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nikolushka and his upbringing, Andre, and religion were Princess Marya's comforts and
joys; but, besides that, since every human being needs his personal hope, Princess Marya
had in the deepest recesses of her soul a hidden dream and hope, which provided the main
comfort of her life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else
being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They haven’t an idea what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there
is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from
the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on
with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put
myself in such a position"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and
the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should
have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English
policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections
between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's
wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder
the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
