“The doctrine of Christ, which teaches love, humility, and self-denial, had always attracted me. But I found a contrary law, both in the history of the past and in the present organization of our lives – a law repugnant to my heart, my conscience, and my reason, but one that flattered my animal instincts. I knew that if I accepted the doctrine of Christ, I should be forsaken, miserable, persecuted, and sorrowing, as Christ tells us His followers will be. I knew that if I accepted that law of man, I should have the approbation of my fellow-men; I should be at peace and in safety; all possible sophisms would be at hand to quiet my conscience and I should ‘laugh and be merry,’ as Christ says. I felt this, and therefore I avoided a closer examination of the law of Christ, and tried to comprehend it in a way that should not prevent my still leading my animal life. But, finding that impossible, I desisted from all attempts at comprehension.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it...”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”

― Leo Tolstoy

“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows.”

― 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

“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy.”

― 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

“I don’t count life as life without love”

― Leo Tolstoy


Contact Us


Send us a mail and we will get in touch with you soon!

You can email us at: contact@fancyread.com
Fancyread Inc.