“In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp
from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read.
And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his
heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man lives, then he believes in something. If he didn't believe that one must live for
something, then he wouldn't live. If he doesn't see and doesn't understand the illusoriness of
the finite, he believes in the infinite; if he does understand the illusoriness of the finite, he must
believe in the infinite without which one cannot live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She danced the dance so well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who
handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she
laughed as she watched that slender and graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet,
belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya
and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Woman is deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education results from
the absence of rights. We must not forget that the subjection of women is so complete, and
dates from such ages back that we are often unwilling to recognise the gulf that separates
them from us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie
such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
―
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
It is heavenly, when I overcome
My earthly desires
But nevertheless, when I'm not successful,
It can also be quite pleasurable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he
participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself,
there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such
conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem
to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Come, what did I say, repeat it? he would ask. But I could never repeat anything, so
ludicrous it seemed that he should talk to me, not of himself or me, but of something else, as
though it mattered what happened outside us. Only much later I began to have some slight
understanding of his cares and to be interested in them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's
flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however,
was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous
(sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very
often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than
beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression
they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she
looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
