“There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even
the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget
oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.”
―
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
“There are as many kinds of love, as there are hearts”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor
humility nor purity”
―
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
“And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars
on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and
the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular
harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny
tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as
he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at
speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and
impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail
and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body
seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and
blossomed into new life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as
one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants,
yet this one won't submit.”
―
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
“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
―
Leo Tolstoy
