“Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how
they should change. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in
fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from
me....And now the work's done, there's only death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.”
―
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
“Faith is neither hope nor trust, but a particular spiritual state. Faith is man’s awareness that
his position in the world obliges him to perform certain actions. A person acts according to his
faith, not as the catechism says because he believes in things unseen as in things seen, nor
because he wishes to achieve things hoped for, but simply because having defined his
position in the world it is natural for him to act according to it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing
on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the
voices of those who were disputing honestly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do
not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself. —HENRI AMIEL”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity
of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated
without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more
deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one
thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to
which to reply.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and
insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words,
become oblivious.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
