“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be
qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so
on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more
often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be
true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet
we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers;
the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows
swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same
with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests
one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All is over...I have nothing but you, remember that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place, settled down, and
laid to rest.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself,
there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such
conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem
to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is to be done? There was no solution, but the universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. The answer is: one must live in the needs of
the day -- that is, forget oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's
flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however,
was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous
(sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very
often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than
beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression
they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she
looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
