“All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism,
self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like
that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were
influenced only by their immediate personal interests.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be
the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a
moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“marveling at this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight
of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for
happiness rests only on oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the
gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet
gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that
same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Everything that I know, I know only because I love.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The Bible legend tells us that the absence of toil - idleness - was a condition of the first
man's state of bliss before the Fall. This love of idleness has remained the same in the fallen
man, but the curse still lies heavy on the human race....because our moral nature is such that
we are unable to be idle and at peace.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of
outside matters.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of
deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was
difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
