“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A thought can advance your life in the right direction only when it answers questions which
were asked by your soul. A thought which was first borrowed from someone else and then
accepted by your mind and memory does not really much influence your life, and sometimes
leads you in the wrong direction. Read less, study less, but think more.
Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which
you really need and which you really want to know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always
talk about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of
an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in
comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of
ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your
reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings
similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the
significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do
you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another
sentiment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he
participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
―
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
“But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if
everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
