“A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of
pleasure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically
irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on
his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an
Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is
unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A
Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know
anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most mentally deranged people are those who see in others indications of insanity
they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing
what others have not seen.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else
being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why do i live? In the infinity of space, and infinity of time infinitely small particles mutate
with infinite complexity. When you understand the laws of these mutations, you'll understand
why you live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are these deaths and revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in
the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague
hope of finding God. I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What,
then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without whom there could
be no life." To know God and to liVe come to one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we do
them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my
wife.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me
to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed
within me, and I began to live once again.”
―
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
“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
