“I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it
right.”
―
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
“Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him
took away the beauty of what he saw.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault,
which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I
die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking
anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.”
―
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
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God.
And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to
love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the
guiltlessness of suffering.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love them that hate you, but you can't love those you hate.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The soul of man is the lamp of God,’ says a wise Jewish proverb. Man is a weak and
miserable creature when God’s light is not burning in his soul. But when it burns (and it only
burns in souls enlightened by religion), man becomes the most powerful creature in the world.And it cannot be otherwise, for what then works in him is not his own strength, but the strength
of God.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One must do one of two tings: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and
then stick up for one's rights in it;or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as i
do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover
in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who
fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand because I
love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love,
shall return to the general and eternal source." These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But
they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too
one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
