“He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor
humility nor purity”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“That only shows you have no heart,’ she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a
heart, and that was why she was afraid of him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of
insanity they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer
deceived me. No matter how many times I am told: you cannot understand the meaning of life,
do not thinking about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long.
Now I cannot help seeing day and night chasing me and leading me to my death. This is all I
can see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had
long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed
to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything,
simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to
be quite the opposite.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how
constrained.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position
not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel,
that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the
fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see
someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hear people
laughing.
Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who
composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into
another, but why this happens I don't know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who
fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
