“It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the
blame for everybody else's mistakes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change
of life or by a change of conscience.”
―
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
“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the
rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the
people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever
theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must
be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not
according to progress but according to my own heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually
encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves
very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and
morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own
body.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with
his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but
studiously ignoring them. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn,
and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of
goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious
part in it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nothing has been discovered, nothing has been invented. We can only know that we know
nothing. And that's the highest degree of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of
history think important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the
domain of feelings.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
