“I asked: 'What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?' And I replied to
quite another question: 'What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?' With
the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: 'None'.”
―
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
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
―
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
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and
the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these
blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I
wish to destroy that by which I live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman and least of all for his
wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. "Another's wife is a swan, but one's
own is bitter wormwood.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to
understand or pity him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Love them that hate you, but you can't love those you hate.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
