“When Mother smiled, no matter how nice her face had been before, it became
incomparably nicer and everything around seemed to brighten up as well.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship
to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a
religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a
person to exist without a religion than without a heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas
which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, though each individual idea,
expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is horribly debased when only one of the
links, of which it forms a part, is taken by itself. But the interlinking of these ideas is not, I think,
an intellectual process, but something else, and it is impossible to express the source of this
interlinking directly in words; it can only be done indirectly by describing images, actions, and
situations in words.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of
being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I
don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not
able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another
person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the
hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“On earth, here on this earth, there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the universe, in the
whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now the children of earth are—
eternally—children of the whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher
beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the Deity—the Supreme Power if
you prefer the term—is manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
why should i suppose it breaks off at me and does not go father and father? I feel that I cannot
vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always have
existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world there is
truth”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they
have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature
changes with the times.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
―
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
“I turned my attention to every thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians,
I was horrified.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those
who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of
development in the spectator, I admit, but . . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way
because I am staggering from side to side! ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a
picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is
only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human
being for another.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But a man’s relationship to the world is determined not just by his intellect but by his
feelings and by his who aggregate of spiritual forces. However much one implies or explains to
a person that all that truly exists is no more than an idea, or that everything is made up of
atoms, or that the essence of life is substance or will, or that heat, light, movement and
electricity are only manifestations of one and the same energy; however much you explain this
to a man—a being who feels, suffers, rejoices, fears and hopes—it will not explain his place in
the universe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of
an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in
comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of
ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your
reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings
similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the
significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do
you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
