“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human
wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only
one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with
only one thing: you can become better yourself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are
engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is
far from Me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that
this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own.
Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do
not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning
or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to
laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the
condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer
Sonata”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive...and
strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet
joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a
cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life...he
began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of
true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself...wrote in
his diary, began afresh... ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what
purpose he had been placed in the word.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it
would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it,”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the
blame for everybody else's mistakes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of
ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not
seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted
of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies
in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which
should flow from it—a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to
England and America alike.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
