“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else
being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him,
but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm
him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing."
"Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her
bosom.
"So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as
grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One step across the dividing line, so like the one between the living and the dead and you
enter an unknown world of suffering and death. What will you find there? Who will be there?
There, just just beyond the field, that tree, that sunlit roof? No one knows, and yet you want to
know. You dread crossing that line, and yet you want to cross it. You know sooner or later you
will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably found
out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all
around you just the same- strong, excited and full of life.' This is what all men think when they
get sight of the enemy, or they feel it if they do not think it, and it is this feeling that gives a
special lustre and a delicious edge to the awareness of everything that is now happening.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Everything that I know, I know only because I love.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”
―
Leo Tolstoy