“Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't
got.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however
trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions
if one's entire attention is devoted to it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at
my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out.
It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am
ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I
was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help
me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“On earth, here on this earth, there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the universe, in the
whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now the children of earth are—
eternally—children of the whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher
beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the Deity—the Supreme Power if
you prefer the term—is manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
why should i suppose it breaks off at me and does not go father and father? I feel that I cannot
vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always have
existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world there is
truth”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness
of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished... the most solemn mystery in the
world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of suspenseand softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but grew more intense. No
one slept.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons,
which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and,
loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was
worth loving them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left,
then everything is so unimportant!... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with
work - anything so as not think of death”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and
the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do
not see in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor
humility nor purity”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as
one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion
as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must
inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.
Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an
unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once
committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others,
has an historical value. The higher a man's place in the social scale, the more connections has
with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability
and predestination of every act he commits. "The hearts of kings are in the hand of God." The
king is the slave of history.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
