“Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested
the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way
because I am staggering from side to side! ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with
divine love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Suppose a problem in psychology was set: What can be done to persuade the men of our
time — Christians, humanitarians or, simply, kindhearted people — into committing the most
abominable crimes with no feeling of guilt? There could be only one way: to do precisely what
is being done now, namely, to make them governors, inspectors, officers, policemen, and so
forth; which means, first, that they must be convinced of the existence of a kind of organization
called ‘government service,’ allowing men to be treated like inanimate objects and banningthereby all human brotherly relations with them; and secondly, that the people entering this
‘government service’ must be so unified that the responsibility for their dealings with men
would never fall on any one of them individually.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to
heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of
their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred
to me, if I were to go through with it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves
must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe
that in anyone's time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him
alone expect mercy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to
examine it. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
