“Sight-seeing, aside from the fact that everything had been seen already, could not have for
him--and intelligent Russian--the inexplicable importance attached to it by the English.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he
nevertheless recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever
he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the
district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing
itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely
necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and
diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself
more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of
what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much
better than before and that it was expanding more and more.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say,
events the reasonableness of which we do not understand).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her,
as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is
continuous.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No, you’re going in vain,” she mentally addressed a company in a coach-and-four who
were evidently going out of town for some merriment. “And the dog you’re taking with you
won’t help you. You won’t get away from yourselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair,
and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one
mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery
had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew
that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to
him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if
the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll
as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a
distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both
ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political
opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of
his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the
enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“in infinite space and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex,
is differentiated",is to say nothing at all. Those are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite
is neither complex nor simple, no forward nor backward, or better or worse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
