“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he
thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”
―
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
“oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was
difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a
man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean
that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two
hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we do
them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“she smiled at him, and at her own fears.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
-- he recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed
there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Everything that I know, I know only because I love.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and
perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
