“Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain.”

Leo Tolstoy

“He meditated on the use to which he should put all the energy of youth which comes to a man only once in life. Should he devote this power, which is not the strength of intellect or heart or education, but an urge which once spent can never return, the power given to a man once only to make himself, or even – so it seems to him at the time – the universe into anything he wishes: should he devote it to art, to science, to love, or to practical activities? True, there are people who never have this urge: at the outset of life they place their necks under the first yoke that offers itself, and soberly toil away in it to the end of their days.”

Leo Tolstoy

“A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a genius”

Leo Tolstoy

“To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.”

Leo Tolstoy

“All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”

Leo Tolstoy

“We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life brings about...We are all brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from needy laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle. We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which only serves to hinder men from understanding true Christianity.”

Leo Tolstoy

“One might murder and steal and yet be happy”

Leo Tolstoy

“No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be able to leave it.”

Leo Tolstoy

“The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

Leo Tolstoy

“Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snow drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were.”

Leo Tolstoy

“You wait a bit, wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and touching his hand. "I've told you what I know, and I repeat that in this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor.”

Leo Tolstoy

“We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug between us.”

Leo Tolstoy

“It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man, to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.

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


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