“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of
happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very
possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest”
―
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
“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better
than before.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete
discord between the spouses or loving harmony.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil
- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing
what others have not seen.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a
man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean
that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two
hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that
bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive...and
strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet
joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a
cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life...he
began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of
true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself...wrote in
his diary, began afresh... ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made
(Latin).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
