“If a teacher has only love for the cause, it will be a good teacher. If a teacher has only love
for student, as a father, mother, he will be better than the teacher, who read all the books, but
has no love for the cause, nor to the students. If the teacher combines love to the cause and
to his disciples, he is the perfect teacher.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest”
―
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
“The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change
of life or by a change of conscience.”
―
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
“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
“...the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure
themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the
one which coincides with the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over
her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved
her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself
beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to
town.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You're not racing?" joked the officer.
"Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully.
And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever
phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One might murder and steal and yet be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire
and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs,
a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. “And why did I come here?” he
wondered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one
thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to
which to reply.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the
state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life -
those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not
lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As though tears were the indispensable oil without which the machinery of mutual
confidence could not run smoothly between the two sister, the sisters after their tears talked,
not of what was uppermost in their minds, but though they talked of outside matters, they
understood each other.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
