“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and
so I can't live," Levin said to himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
historic, universal aims of humanity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of
it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire
and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs,
a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. “And why did I come here?” he
wondered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not
so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know...I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In captivity, in the shed, Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his
life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural
human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity; but now, in
these last three weeks of the march, he had learned a new and more comforting truth - he had
learned that there is nothing frightening in the world. He had learned that, as there is no
situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation
in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. He had learned that there is a limit to
suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close; that the man who suffers
because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling
asleep on the bare, damp ground, one side getting cold as the other warmed up; that when he
used to put on his tight ballroom shoes, he suffered just as much as now, when he walked
quite barefoot (his shoes had long since worn out) and his feet were covered with sores.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how
they should change. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to
torture ourselves and one another?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself
by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and
mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all
lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing
in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that
"someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable
meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided
understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or
tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me;
nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be,
will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail
to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is
intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere
fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty
about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness”
―
Leo Tolstoy