“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“- Every girl is proud of an offer, Yes, every girl, but not she”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of
fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for the past love
which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its
place remains, but it is all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections
are still left, and gratitude; but...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the
inner workings of his very soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur,
about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the
still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could
understand or explain.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other
because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such
circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke
was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of
Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“... for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he
said was very clever or very stupid.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons,
which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and,
loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was
worth loving them”
―
Leo Tolstoy