“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
“at one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of
religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a
new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that
there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you
see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to
work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and
you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the
literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks
he's finished.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How strange, extraordinary, and joyful it was to her to think that her son - the little son,
whose tiny limbs had faintly stirred within her twenty years ago, for whose sake she had so
often quarreled with the count, who would spoil him, the little son, who had first learnt to say
grusha, and then had learnt to say baba - that that son was now in a foreign land, in strange
surroundings, a manly warrior, alone without help or guidance, doing there his proper manly
work. All the world-wide experience of ages, proving that children do imperceptibly from the
cradle grow up into men, did not exist for the countess. The growth of her son had been for
her at every strage of his growth just as extraordinary as though millions of millions of men
had not grown up in the same way. Just as, twenty years before, she could not believe that the
little creature that was lying somewhere under her heart, would one day cry and learn to talk,
now she could not believe that the same little creature could be that strong, brave man, that
paragon of sons and of men that, judging by this letter, he was now.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they
went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human
wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached
love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one
another.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How can one be well...when one suffers morally?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of
an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in
comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of
ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your
reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings
similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the
significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do
you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?”
―
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
“In his Petersburg world people were divided into two quite opposite sorts. One--the inferior
sort: the paltry, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people who believe that a husband should
live with the one wife to whom he is married, that a girl should be pure, a woman modest, and
a man, manly, self controlled and firm; that one should bring up one's children to earn their
living, should pay one's debts, and other nonsense of the kind. These were the old-fashioned
and ridiculous people. But there was another sort of people: the real people to which all his set
belonged, who had above all to be well-bred, generous, bold, gay, and to abandon themselves
unblushingly to all their passions and laugh at everything else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Kind people help each other even without noticing that they are doing so, and evil people
act against each other on purpose. —CHINESE PROVERB”
―
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
