“That only shows you have no heart,’ she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a
heart, and that was why she was afraid of him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair,
and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one
mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery
had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent
cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
*"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known
happiness!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.”
―
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
“But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the
thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of whichhe felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of
kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called
heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life
that present themselves, and desire that alone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my
wife.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I must ask what it is you want of me?"
"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she
said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love,
and there is none. So then all is over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the
whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was
always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the
activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But
now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no
longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary,
saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and
more.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
