“When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once.
But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and
spring grass.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Now, however, he had learned to see the great, the eternal, the infinite in everything, and
therefore, in order to look at it, to enjoy his contemplation of it, he naturally discarded teh
telescope through which he had till then been gazing over the heads of men, and joyfully
surveyed the ever-changeing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And
the closer he looked, the happier and more seren he was. The awful question: What for? a
simple answer was now always ready in his soul: Because there is a God, that God without
whose will not one hair of a man's head falls.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to
prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone
but myself. I have that right, haven't I?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness,
he occasionally spent nights at his desk.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“marveling at this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight
of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives
me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of
insanity they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was much changed and grown even thinner since Pyotr Ivanovich had last seen him,
but, as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more dignified
than than when he was alive.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are such repulsive faces in the world.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis,
which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a
way to man’s consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it
was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against
deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men
to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Was it through reason that I arrived at the necessity of loving my neighbor and not
throttling him?...Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence and the law which
demands that everyone who hinders the satisfaction of my desires should be throttled. That is
the conclusion of reason. Reason could not discover love for the other, because it’s
unreasonable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
