“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own
body.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and
always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a
dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others
present it would be still worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as
one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase.
Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I do not live when I loose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed
myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek
Him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such
love there can be no sort of tragedy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and
so I can't live," Levin said to himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly
business. We must certainly accept, and we will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil
- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond
remedy, misfortune his own fault.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is nothing, nothing certain but the nothingness of all that is comprehensible to us,
and the grandeur of something incomprehensible, but more important!”
―
Leo Tolstoy