“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not
so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with
divine love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his
wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. "Another's wife is a swan, but one's
own is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.”
―
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
“everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than
these two: patience and time, they will do it all.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and
impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how
constrained.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either
complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a
couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be
undertake.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one
thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to
which to reply.
―
Leo Tolstoy
