“Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary,
considered to be one of the joys of paradise.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome.”
―
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.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be
the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a
moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If a man lives, then he believes in something. If he didn't believe that one must live for
something, then he wouldn't live. If he doesn't see and doesn't understand the illusoriness of
the finite, he believes in the infinite; if he does understand the illusoriness of the finite, he must
believe in the infinite without which one cannot live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The Jew is that sacred being, who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire, and
has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of
which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive. A
living man knows himself not otherwise than as wanting, that is, he is conscious of his will.
And his will, which constitutes the essence of his life, man is conscious of and cannot be
conscious of otherwise than as free.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
