“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they
have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature
changes with the times.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Lord have mercy! Pardon and help us!" he repeated the words that suddenly and
unexpectedly sprang to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated those words not with his lips
only. At that instant he knew that neither his doubts nor the impossibility of believing with his
reason- of which he was conscious- all prevented his appealing to God. It all flew off like dust.
To whom should he appeal, if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love,
to be?
―
Leo Tolstoy
Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his
own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of
goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious
part in it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his
wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. "Another's wife is a swan, but one's
own is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed
to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass,
young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and sendout living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten.
The wound was healing from inside.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was
only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of
life. It was she. It was Kitty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“ٰ "The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one
suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him
feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were
done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not
exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at
remembering them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
