“In the past he had been unable to see the great, teh unfathomable, the infinite, in anything.
He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had been seeking it. In everything near and
comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and meaningless.
He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and gazed into the distance where the
distance had seemed to him great and infinite only because they were not clearly visible. Such
had Europan life, politics, Masonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. Bet even
then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated that
distance too, and he had seen there the same triviality, worldliness, and absurdity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed
shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady
passionless course of time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement
to rulers chosen by the masses.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy,
and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything I know, I know because of love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but
every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing
humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“she smiled at him, and at her own fears.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become
stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove
without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
