“I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go
on until you remember what was there before you were in the world. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it
up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper,
scattered the peas in all directions and ran away”
―
Leo Tolstoy
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly
engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it
altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or
unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever
leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“if they hadn’t both been pretending, but had had what is called a heart-to-heart talk, that is,
simply told each other just what they were thinking and feeling, then they would just have
looked into each other’s eyes, and Constantine would only have said: ‘You’re dying, dying,
dying!’ – while Nicholas would simply have replied: ‘I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, afraid,
afraid!’ That’s all they would have said if they’d been talking straight from the heart. But it was
impossible to live that way, so Levin tried to do what he’d been trying to do all his life without
being able to, what a great many people could do so well, as he observed, and without which
life was impossible: he tried to say something different from what he thought, and he always
felt it came out false, that his brother caught him out and was irritated by it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder- und Hausmärchen) is a collection of
German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers
Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales (German: Grimms
Märchen).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for
which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was
far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to
understand or pity him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper...there will be still the same wall between
the holy of holies of my soul and other people...but my life now, my whole life apart from
anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before,
but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
