“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
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
“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
“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he
said was very clever or very stupid.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me
to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed
within me, and I began to live once again.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of
course.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As though tears were the indispensable oil without which the machinery of mutual
confidence could not run smoothly between the two sister, the sisters after their tears talked,
not of what was uppermost in their minds, but though they talked of outside matters, they
understood each other.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible".
Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any
farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the
historians produce a saving conception of ‘greatness.’ ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the
standards of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for
which a ‘great’ man can be blamed.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and
having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. It
seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in
ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in
horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service.
'Nothing is without consequence, and nothing is important: it's all the same in the end. The
thing to do is to save myself from it all as best I can,' thought Pierre. Not to see IT, that terrible
IT.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
