“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like
the sun, even without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To claim that the supernatural and irrational form the basic characteristics of religion is
much the same as noticing only the rotten apples and then claiming that the basic features of
the fruit named apple are a flaccid bitterness and a harmful effect produced in the stomach.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain
what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell
yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve
chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry
when you’re old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little
corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with
stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with
the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird --
spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever
it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn
on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the
wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were
bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting
their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the
walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men
and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not
this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's
world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony
and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for
wielding power over each other.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy