“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why do you need to be like anyone? You're good as you are,”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In historical events great men-so called-are but the labels that serve to give a mane to an
event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action
of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at
all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot
reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem,
gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges
seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force
of life pushing up from inside.This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her
love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love
awoke, and life awoke.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one
loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the
gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet
gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that
same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or
she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are these deaths and revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in
the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague
hope of finding God. I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What,
then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without whom there could
be no life." To know God and to liVe come to one and the same thing. God is life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is
continuous.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political
opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of
his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in
the snow drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night
where they were.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
