The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer
deceived me. No matter how many times I am told: you cannot understand the meaning of life,
do not thinking about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long.
Now I cannot help seeing day and night chasing me and leading me to my death. This is all I
can see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be
the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a
moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days.
The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the
housekeeper, and wrote”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material
poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap
newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas
which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, though each individual idea,
expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is horribly debased when only one of the
links, of which it forms a part, is taken by itself. But the interlinking of these ideas is not, I think,
an intellectual process, but something else, and it is impossible to express the source of this
interlinking directly in words; it can only be done indirectly by describing images, actions, and
situations in words.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur,
about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the
still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could
understand or explain.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be
better than he had been formerly”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If everyone fought only for his own convictions, there would be no wars.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of
knowledge is mere amusement. —VISHNU PURANA,”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars
on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and
the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular
harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny
tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as
he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at
speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and
impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail
and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body
seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and
blossomed into new life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One must do one of two tings: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and
then stick up for one's rights in it;or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as i
do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of
their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred
to me, if I were to go through with it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,’ he thought. And suddenly at this
thought of death a whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his
imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the
days when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for
himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he
was billeted with Nesvitsky and began to walk up and down before it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
