“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to
town.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they
have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature
changes with the times.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of
it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one
another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look
established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of
things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of
humanity and were brothers.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship
to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a
religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a
person to exist without a religion than without a heart.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to
heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Come, what did I say, repeat it? he would ask. But I could never repeat anything, so
ludicrous it seemed that he should talk to me, not of himself or me, but of something else, as
though it mattered what happened outside us. Only much later I began to have some slight
understanding of his cares and to be interested in them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why is gambling forbidden while women in costumes which evoke sensuality are not
forbidden? They are a thousand times more dangerous!”
―
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
