“Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog
himself so as not to see the misery of his position.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried away by
passions; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes,
where were in some instances even more refined than now. If we have come to believe in the
perversity and coarse violence of that period, that is only because the traditions, memoirs,
stories, and novels that have been handed to us, record for the most part exceptional cases of
violence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that period was
turbulence, is as unjust as it would before a man, seeing nothing but the tops of trees beyond
a hill, to conclude that there was nothing to be found in that locality but trees.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with
terrible energy towards one blissful goal.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while
men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east
to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
to the west slaying their fellows.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare
shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man is never such an egoist as at moments of spiritual exaltation, when it seems to him
that there is nothing in the world more splendid and fascinating than himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
