“And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to
understand or pity him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present
frame of mind might never change.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Everything that I know, I know only because I love.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-
sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an
expression of one fact of human endeavor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not
infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are
contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously
and cannot even insult each one another.”
―
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
“But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
-- he recovered.”
―
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
“Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with
divine love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”
―
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
“... for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of
course.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he
sees that they are accepted by those about him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better; and
therefore, those who wish to improve life must direct all their efforts towards changing both
their own and other people’s consciousness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
