“It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences.
The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the
knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop
you from understanding the basic rules of life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the
happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they
went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my
life?
Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty,
to love the statue of a woman?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over."
"Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Therein is the whole business of one’s life; to seek out and save in the soul that which is
perishing.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while
rationally justifying the other's activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that
the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it
right.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy