“What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of
wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to
one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power
is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to
happen”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another
sentiment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the
earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier,
because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we do
them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed
shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady
passionless course of time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Higher and higher receded the sky, wider and wider spread the streak of dawn, whiter
grew the pallid silver of the dew, more lifeless the sickle of the moon...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will
always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in
this world there is truth.
―
Leo Tolstoy