“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he
participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to
be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live
and be happy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And
it's all so unimportant!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“According to the biblical tradition the absence of work -- idleness -- was a condition of the
first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in
fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread
by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both
idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man
could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he
would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such
state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men -- the military
class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of
military service, and it always will.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the
human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the
means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too
depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee
everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one's eyes
to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a
man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the
second.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,’ he thought. And suddenly at this
thought of death a whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his
imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the
days when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for
himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he
was billeted with Nesvitsky and began to walk up and down before it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of
pleasure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In that brief glance Vronsky has time to notice the restrained animation that played over
her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved
her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself
beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately
extinguished the light in her her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable
smile.”
―
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
“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
“Everything seemed pleasant and easy to Nikolai during the first part of his stay in
Voronezh and, as generally happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything
went well and easily.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
