“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible".
Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I turned my attention to every thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians,
I was horrified.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and
so I can't live," Levin said to himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling
house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding
that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To improve ourselves, to move toward that goal, perfection, that puts no less a demand on
us for being unattainable, requires solitude, removal from the concerns of everyday life. And
yet constant solitude renders self-improvement impossible, if not pointless. A balance must be
struck between meditating in solitude and then applying this to your everyday life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and
women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this
spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world,
given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to
love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Reason is often the slave of sin; it strives to justify it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
