“But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the
ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which
there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime
something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no
conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“God gave the day, God gave the strength.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”
―
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
“...but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to
such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral
beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood
them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature
with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but
with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part
of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he
nevertheless recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as
usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his fortune,and everyone is satisfied with his wit.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect
that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so
earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him
as worthy of her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
