“I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have
the right to do that, haven't I?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the
ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which
there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime
something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no
conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds
no outlet in our quiet life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow
creatures, are those that have remote consequences.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The best solution is to be kind and good while ignoring the opinions of others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into
Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood
which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme
law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope,
light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our
dreams.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself as a king, not because she had made an
impression on Anna-he did not yet believe that-but because the impression she had made on
him gave him happiness and pride.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the
unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
