“It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship
to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a
religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a
person to exist without a religion than without a heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and
your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of
wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service
because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also
want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always
be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made
up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions
usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past
and make plans for the future.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil
- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget
Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died.
What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I
should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live,
only when I feel Him and seek Him. “What more do you seek?” exclaimed a voice within me.
“This is He. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the
same thing. God is life.”
“Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.” And more than ever before, all
within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it,
there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I'd be, if I could say now: Lord, have mercy on
me! ... But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an indefinable, unfathomable power, which I not
only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words - the great all or nothing...or it is that
God of whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain,
except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something
incomprehensible but most important!
―
Leo Tolstoy
“kitty always assumed the most beautiful things about people”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out
for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the
more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid
down for him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do
not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself. —HENRI AMIEL”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
