“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
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my
feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.
―
Leo Tolstoy
*"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known
happiness!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In historical events great men-so called-are but the labels that serve to give a mane to an
event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action
of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at
all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the
heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the
disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war
and violence to Christians.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nikolushka and his upbringing, Andre, and religion were Princess Marya's comforts and
joys; but, besides that, since every human being needs his personal hope, Princess Marya
had in the deepest recesses of her soul a hidden dream and hope, which provided the main
comfort of her life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go
on until you remember what was there before you were in the world. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent”
―
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
“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom”
―
Leo Tolstoy
