“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse.
It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because I love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be,
command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful
to you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and
punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of
my life.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he
participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my
mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other
people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail
in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray--but my life now,
my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not
meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in
my power to put into it!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the
pause of happiness”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite
qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like
that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is
narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull,
now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human
quality and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes
unlike himself—while still remaining the same man.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar
charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new
to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day
outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to
follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she
read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless
steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech,
she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she
too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the
smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was as easy to recognize in that crowd as a rose among nettles.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't
got.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of
wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to
one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power
is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it
is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
