“There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for
him--and intelligent Russian--the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are men who call land theirs, yet have never set eyes on that land and have never
trodden it. There are men who call other men theirs, but yet have never set eyes on the other
men, and their sole relation to those other men consists of doing them evil. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and
evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness,
flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything that I Know, I Know Only Because I Love...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the
earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier,
because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him
alone expect mercy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Come, what did I say, repeat it? he would ask. But I could never repeat anything, so
ludicrous it seemed that he should talk to me, not of himself or me, but of something else, as
though it mattered what happened outside us. Only much later I began to have some slight
understanding of his cares and to be interested in them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
