“For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond
remedy, misfortune his own fault.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The man who ten years earlier and one year later was considered a bandit and outlaw is
sent a two-day sail from France, to an island given into his possession, with his guards and
several million, which are paid to him for some reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the
more their poverty will increase.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he
thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being
but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a
part of that enormous whole.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is
not gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I do not live when I loose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed
myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek
Him”
―
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
“It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and
senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him
alone expect mercy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
