“The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow
creatures, are those that have remote consequences.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it
is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”
―
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
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to
prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone
but myself. I have that right, haven't I?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested
the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite
ordinary occurrence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the
person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion
as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must
inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.
Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an
unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once
committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others,
has an historical value. The higher a man's place in the social scale, the more connections has
with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability
and predestination of every act he commits. "The hearts of kings are in the hand of God." The
king is the slave of history.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
