“When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is
evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog
himself so as not to see the misery of his position.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the
lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband
ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a
woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's
children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the
class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real
people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous,
plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything
else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Our existence is now so entirely in contradiction with the doctrine of Jesus, that only with
the greatest difficulty can we understand its meaning. We have been so deaf to the rules of life
that he has given us, to his explanations,—not only when he commands us not to kill, but
when he warns us against anger, when he commands us not to resist evil, to turn the other
cheek, to love our enemies; we are so accustomed to speak of a body of men especially
organized for murder, as a Christian army, we are so accustomed to prayers addressed to the
Christ for the assurance of victory, we who have made the sword, that symbol of murder, an
almost sacred object (so that a man deprived of this symbol, of his sword, is a dishonored
man); we are so accustomed, I say, to this, that the words of Jesus seem to us compatible
with war. We say, "If he had forbidden it, he would have said so plainly." We forget that Jesus
did not foresee that men having faith in his doctrine of humility, love, and fraternity, could ever,
with calmness and premeditation, organize themselves for the murder of their brethren.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and
impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force is a theoretical one, which
can be neglected. Yet this question is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some
answer from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been outwardly professed, this
question is for men in their social life like the question which presents itself to a traveler when
the road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but will go on just as I did before.
There was one road, now there are two, and he must make his choice.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity,
can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them
to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the
fabric of their lives.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
-- he recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They haven’t an idea what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there
is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should
have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English
policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections
between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's
wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder
the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary of
hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting
for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were
already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and
your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of
wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service
because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also
want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always
be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made
up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days.
The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the
housekeeper, and wrote”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
