“Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that
the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his
strength.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was
enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a
stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his
straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now
sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were spent in curing
debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist, whereas now all efforts are
employed, not in extirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of
the consequences.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.”
―
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
“Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons,
which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and,
loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was
worth loving them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a
mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were
also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The
mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink
-- he recovered.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can
understand."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She did worse than break the law, she broke the rules”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly
pure.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not
be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
