“I have lived through much and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A
quiet, secluded life in the country with possibility of being useful to people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken
and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He meditated on the use to which he should put all the energy of youth which comes to a
man only once in life. Should he devote this power, which is not the strength of intellect or
heart or education, but an urge which once spent can never return, the power given to a man
once only to make himself, or even – so it seems to him at the time – the universe into
anything he wishes: should he devote it to art, to science, to love, or to practical activities?
True, there are people who never have this urge: at the outset of life they place their necks
under the first yoke that offers itself, and soberly toil away in it to the end of their days.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing
what others have not seen.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me
to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed
within me, and I began to live once again.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to
heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how
they should change. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the
dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of
intellect.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and
she began.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those
who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of
development in the spectator, I admit, but . . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
―
Leo Tolstoy
