“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know...I know because I love"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or
she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's
flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however,
was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous
(sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very
often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than
beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression
they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she
looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree
of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the
whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was
always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the
activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But
now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no
longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary,
saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and
more.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover
in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question.
For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith
Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must
have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I
fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing
to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the
business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions
of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that
was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Only during a period of war does it become obvious how millions of people can be
manipulated. People, millions of people, are filled with pride while doing things which those
same people actually consider stupid, evil, dangerous, painful, and criminal, and they strongly
criticize these things—but continue doing them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could,
and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise
you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...
Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grieg, and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been in
darkness, sputtered, grew dim, and went out forever.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
