“Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full. The
most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any
idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if
he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before
him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else
being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to
heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why
not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that
someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves.
Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs
and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went on, that people who
solemnly utter those words, 'I love you,' either deceive themselves, or what's still worse,
deceive others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty
or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess
of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the
production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union
among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and
progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“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
“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All is over...I have nothing but you, remember that.”
―
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
“They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked,
would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say,
for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon
as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new
and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal
before us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
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
“The best solution is to be kind and good while ignoring the opinions of others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All families are happy, all families are alike.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
