“[...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they
are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can
understand."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if
everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants,
yet this one won't submit.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of
it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which
I have the power to put into it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but
every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing
humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she
would not be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity,
can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them
to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the
fabric of their lives.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and
insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words,
become oblivious.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
