“The Bible legend tells us that the absence of toil - idleness - was a condition of the first
man's state of bliss before the Fall. This love of idleness has remained the same in the fallen
man, but the curse still lies heavy on the human race....because our moral nature is such that
we are unable to be idle and at peace.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of
deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the
gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet
gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that
same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I?
What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there
was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all
an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will
die and learn everything--or stop asking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar
charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new
to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day
outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he
nevertheless recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know...I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how
they should change. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God.
And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to
love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the
guiltlessness of suffering.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.
Such is the quality of bees...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
