“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always
talk about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything seemed pleasant and easy to Nikolai during the first part of his stay in
Voronezh and, as generally happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything
went well and easily.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of
slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labor of others and
should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and
arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure
themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because
people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labor of others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human
wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with
his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as
he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and
makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from
the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on
with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put
myself in such a position"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear
the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with
her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
