“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“-Why are you so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the
more their poverty will increase.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the
inner workings of his very soul.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But that's just the aim of civilization—to
make everything a source of enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it
is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one
hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is
my idea of happiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and
physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded
flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and
ruined it.”
―
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
“Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem
presented itself - Death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one
thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to
which to reply.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To improve ourselves, to move toward that goal, perfection, that puts no less a demand on
us for being unattainable, requires solitude, removal from the concerns of everyday life. And
yet constant solitude renders self-improvement impossible, if not pointless. A balance must be
struck between meditating in solitude and then applying this to your everyday life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
