“A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it
up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper,
scattered the peas in all directions and ran away”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and
senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever
he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the
district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing
itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely
necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and
diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself
more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of
what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much
better than before and that it was expanding more and more.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the
room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a
serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that
moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that anyone can produce
at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand times leave us
cold, and the thousand and first time they set us thrilling and weeping.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I must ask what it is you want of me?"
"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she
said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love,
and there is none. So then all is over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Kind people help each other even without noticing that they are doing so, and evil people
act against each other on purpose. —CHINESE PROVERB”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself,
then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to
transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the
going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and
time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without
hurting anybody until death takes over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east
to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
to the west slaying their fellows.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
