“The combination of causes of phenomena is beyond the grasp of the human intellect. But
the impulse to seek causes is innate in the soul of man. And the human intellect, with no
inkling of the immense variety and complexity of circumstances conditioning a phenomenon,
any one of which may be separately conceived of as the cause of it, snatches at the first and
most easily understood approximation, and says here is the cause.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but
every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing
humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One step across the dividing line, so like the one between the living and the dead and you
enter an unknown world of suffering and death. What will you find there? Who will be there?
There, just just beyond the field, that tree, that sunlit roof? No one knows, and yet you want to
know. You dread crossing that line, and yet you want to cross it. You know sooner or later you
will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably found
out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all
around you just the same- strong, excited and full of life.' This is what all men think when they
get sight of the enemy, or they feel it if they do not think it, and it is this feeling that gives a
special lustre and a delicious edge to the awareness of everything that is now happening.”
―
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
“What is to be done? There was no solution, but the universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. The answer is: one must live in the needs of
the day -- that is, forget oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Answer me two more questions,’ said the King. ‘The first is, Why did the earth bear such
grain then and has ceased to do so now? And the second is, Why your grandson walks with
two crutches, your son with one, and you yourself with none? Your eyes are bright, your teeth
sound, and your speech clear and pleasant to the ear. How have these things come about?’
And the old man answered:
‘These things are so, because men have ceased to live by their own labour, and have taken to
depending on the labour of others. In the old time, men lived according to God’s law. They had
what was their own, and coveted not what others had produced.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear
the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with
her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But that's just the aim of civilization—to
make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
―
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
“... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for
happiness rests only on oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man, before he passed from one stage to another, could know his future life in full
detail, he would have nothing to live for. It is the same with the life of humanity. If it had a
programme of the life which awaited it before entering a new stage, it would be the surest sign
that it was not living, nor advancing, but simply rotating in the same place
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
