“Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase.
Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”
―
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
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or
she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in these days?" said
the ambassador's wife.
"What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up still," said Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Suppose a problem in psychology was set: What can be done to persuade the men of our
time — Christians, humanitarians or, simply, kindhearted people — into committing the most
abominable crimes with no feeling of guilt? There could be only one way: to do precisely what
is being done now, namely, to make them governors, inspectors, officers, policemen, and so
forth; which means, first, that they must be convinced of the existence of a kind of organization
called ‘government service,’ allowing men to be treated like inanimate objects and banningthereby all human brotherly relations with them; and secondly, that the people entering this
‘government service’ must be so unified that the responsibility for their dealings with men
would never fall on any one of them individually.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
