“And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as
usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly
drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they
have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature
changes with the times.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him
feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were
done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not
exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at
remembering them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning,
'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I must ask what it is you want of me?"
"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she
said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love,
and there is none. So then all is over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did
not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being
shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was
torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs
strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people
was to hide his wounds from them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
