“But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the
thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of whichhe felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of
kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called
heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life
that present themselves, and desire that alone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the
world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while
the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is
not gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with
his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as
he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and
makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better
than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
historic, universal aims of humanity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that
bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't
got.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was no solution but that usual solution which life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer one must live in the needs of one that - that is,
forget oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly,
undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the
aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where
there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that
the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought Prince Andrey, and all
at once there came upon him an irrational, spring feeling of joy and renewal. All the best
moments of his life rose to his memory at once. Austerlitz, with that lofty sky, and the dead,
reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, thrilled by the beauty of the
night, and that night and that moon- it all rushed at once into his mind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I
cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an
infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and
that bubble am I.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
