“And then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“ I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?" she said, letting fall the hand with
which she had grasped the doorpost. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her
face.
"What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have
come to be where you are," he said, "I can’t help it.”
―
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
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are such repulsive faces in the world.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Life meanwhile, the actual life of men with their real interests of health and sickness, labour
and rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, affection, hatred, passion,
went its way, as always, independently, apart from the political amity or enmity of Napoleon
Bonaparte, and apart from all possible reforms.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to
happen”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In his Petersburg world people were divided into two quite opposite sorts. One--the inferior
sort: the paltry, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people who believe that a husband should
live with the one wife to whom he is married, that a girl should be pure, a woman modest, and
a man, manly, self controlled and firm; that one should bring up one's children to earn their
living, should pay one's debts, and other nonsense of the kind. These were the old-fashioned
and ridiculous people. But there was another sort of people: the real people to which all his set
belonged, who had above all to be well-bred, generous, bold, gay, and to abandon themselves
unblushingly to all their passions and laugh at everything else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I say
quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug
between us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy