“War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that
and not play at war. Our attitude towards the fearful necessity of war ought to be stern. It boils
down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war and not a game.
Otherwise, war is a favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor
humility nor purity”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him
feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were
done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not
exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at
remembering them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Now that Vronsky had deceived her, she was prepared to love Levin and to hate Vronsky.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed
there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil
- by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of
happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that
happiness is the realization of desires.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of
it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To speak of it would be giving importance to something that has none.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
