“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it
is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question.
For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith
Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must
have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I
fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing
to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the
business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions
of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that
was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is
continuous.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full. 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
“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope,
light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants,
yet this one won't submit.”
―
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
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
