“Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the
supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards
himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An
Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and
therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as
an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and
easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows
nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be
known.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of
outside matters.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought
of the writer or reformer. ”
―
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
“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To speak of it would be giving importance to something that has none.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot
reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not
infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are
contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously
and cannot even insult each one another.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how
constrained.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Eveyrbody thinks of changing Humanity..and nobody thinks of changing Himself...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
