“If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also
held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible,
but it more closely suited his manner of life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the
more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid
down for him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way
because I am staggering from side to side! ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of
an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Respect is an invention of people who want to cover up the empty place where love should
be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my
wife.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other
because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such
circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke
was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of
Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as
one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The further one goes, the better the land seems. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often,
they are not immediately”
―
Leo Tolstoy
