“Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those
who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of
development in the spectator, I admit, but . . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies
in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which
should flow from it—a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to
England and America alike.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without
fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state
of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt
to become worse than useless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“kitty always assumed the most beautiful things about people”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light all around her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me”
―
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
“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.
Such is the quality of bees...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed
shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady
passionless course of time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he
was here to be where she was.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
