“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and
the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
―
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
“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made
(Latin).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the
law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for
instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and
efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when
lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks
with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of
supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself
and having a deleterious effect on government service.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take part and those
who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of
development in the spectator, I admit, but . . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars
on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and
the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular
harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny
tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as
he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at
speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and
impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail
and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body
seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and
blossomed into new life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had
hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were
as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to
seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I
should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me!... But to whom should I say this? To
some power--- indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which
I cannot express in words---The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who
has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the
nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something
incomprehensible but all important!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When Mother smiled, no matter how nice her face had been before, it became
incomparably nicer and everything around seemed to brighten up as well.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her
little feet in their satin dancing shoes performed their role swiftly, lightly, as if they had wings,
while her face was radiant and ecstatic with happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yet time and again, from different approaches, I kept coming to the same conclusion, that I
could not have come into the world without any cause, reason, or meaning; that I could not be
the fledgeling fallen from the nest that I felt myself to be. If I lie on my back crying in the tall
grass, like a fledgeling, it is because I know that my mother brought me into the world, kept me
warm, fed me and loved me. But where is she, that mother? If I am abandoned, then who has
abandoned me? I cannot hide myself from the fact that someone who loved me gave birth to
me. Who is this someone? Again, God.”
―
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
“But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
