“If a man, before he passed from one stage to another, could know his future life in full
detail, he would have nothing to live for. It is the same with the life of humanity. If it had a
programme of the life which awaited it before entering a new stage, it would be the surest sign
that it was not living, nor advancing, but simply rotating in the same place
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling
house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding
that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of
being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I
don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not
able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another
person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the
hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is
not gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out
for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything
is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as
possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind.
Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and
abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not
know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is
wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however
cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man lives, then he believes in something. If he didn't believe that one must live for
something, then he wouldn't live. If he doesn't see and doesn't understand the illusoriness of
the finite, he believes in the infinite; if he does understand the illusoriness of the finite, he must
believe in the infinite without which one cannot live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship
to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a
religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a
person to exist without a religion than without a heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And what was worst of all was that *It* drew his attention to itself not in order to make him
take some action but only that he should look at *It*, look it straight in the face: look at it and
without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly.
And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations -- new screens --
and new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately
fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It* penetrated them and nothing could veil
*It*.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
