“In the past he had been unable to see the great, teh unfathomable, the infinite, in anything.
He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had been seeking it. In everything near and
comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and meaningless.
He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and gazed into the distance where the
distance had seemed to him great and infinite only because they were not clearly visible. Such
had Europan life, politics, Masonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. Bet even
then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated that
distance too, and he had seen there the same triviality, worldliness, and absurdity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of
outside matters.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I turned my attention to every thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians,
I was horrified.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Although on a conscious level a man lives for himself, he is actually being used for the
attainment of humanity's historical aims. A deed once done becomes irrevocable, and any
action comes together over time with millions of actions performed by other people to create
historical significance.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of
being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I
don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not
able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another
person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the
hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource- slander.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was
standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing
striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowdas a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light
all around her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he
said was very witty or very stupid.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
