“The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this
knowledge is open to everyone.”
―
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
“It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to
be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his
kindness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbor and not to
throttle him?. They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told
me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered
the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction
of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others couldn't be
discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of
pleasure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the
more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid
down for him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But it was not only by this feeling, as Varvara thought, that he was guided. Mingling with
his pride, with his need always to be first, was another motive, at which Varvara did not guess
- a truly religious urge. His disillusionment in Mary (his betrothed), whom he had imagined
such a saint, his feeling of outrage was so cruel that he sank into despair; and despair led him
- whither? To God, to the faith of his childhood, which had never lost its hold upon him.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one's own work. And
he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
