“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis,
which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a
way to man’s consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it
was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against
deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men
to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“she smiled at him, and at her own fears.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly
business. We must certainly accept, and we will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to
happen”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite
ordinary occurrence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity
of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated
without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more
deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why do you need to be like anyone? You're good as you are,”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional
types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin
to invent more natural, true figures.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not
formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most
intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt,
what is laid before him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
