“Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the
world!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
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
“I think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You're not racing?" joked the officer.
"Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully.
And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever
phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been
darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others
that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible....except by getting
off his back.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you could forget and forgive what happened. He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters
of the following phrase, "I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love
you.”"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyes gazed wonderingly
upon the world, whose horizon hides this real life from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou
hast prayed for, demanded as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I am
that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years. Sometimes I lay in thee
grieving because thou didst not recognize me; sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes,
and extended my arms calling thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that
thou shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons,
which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and,
loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was
worth loving them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
