“That which constitutes the cause of the economic poverty of our age is what the English
call over-production (which means that a mass of things are made which are of no use to
anybody, and with which nothing can be done).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“wisdom needs no violence...As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile! We play at
magnanimity and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that
she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce...If there was none of
this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only when it was worth while going to certain
death, as it is now. Then there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended
Michael Ivanovich.”
―
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 smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth ist the most cruel thing one man
can say to another”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our
dreams.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, there is something uncanny, demonic and fascinating in her.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the
thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of whichhe felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of
kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called
heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life
that present themselves, and desire that alone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-
sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an
expression of one fact of human endeavor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything seemed pleasant and easy to Nikolai during the first part of his stay in
Voronezh and, as generally happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything
went well and easily.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
