“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it
unhindered and let it defend itself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which
found no outlet in our quiet life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it
would prevent her from being happy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in
fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from
me....And now the work's done, there's only death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that
there is such a thing as death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness
that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not
weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grieg, and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been in
darkness, sputtered, grew dim, and went out forever.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
