“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness
consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we
live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the
more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid
down for him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand 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." These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But
they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too
one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he was just what he used
to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed occupied not with what was before his
eyes but with something special of his own. The difference between his former and present
self was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to him, he had
puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At
present he still forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but
he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what was before him
and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.
Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been
inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and sympathy
for others shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as contented as
he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants,
yet this one won't submit.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and
physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded
flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and
ruined it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire population
entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every
administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as
long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark,
resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are
moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move my
itself, and then the delusion is no longer possible. The ship follows its own enormous,
independent course, the pole does not reach the moving ship, and the ruler suddenly, from his
position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and
feeble human being.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more
than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had
to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and
painful dying.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the
rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the
people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever
theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must
be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not
according to progress but according to my own heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as
she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no
resources in herself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So it would be, were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a force in men and nations
as in inanimate bodies. In men it takes the form of the psychological principle, so truly
expressed in the words of the Gospel, " They have loved darkness better than light, because
their deeds were evil." This principle shows itself in men not trying to recognise the truth, but to
persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is
a life perfectly consistent with truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the
Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up
and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast
away.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity
of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated
without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more
deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he
said was very clever or very stupid.
―
Leo Tolstoy
