“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God.
And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to
love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the
guiltlessness of suffering.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he
said was very witty or very stupid.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't
got.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
It is heavenly, when I overcome
My earthly desires
But nevertheless, when I'm not successful,
It can also be quite pleasurable.”
―
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
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on
earth”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with
her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was
herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy.""I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was
not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin
was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed
Levin.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me which directs me. I suffer; but
formerly I was dead and only now do I live.”
―
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
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
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