“The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all
satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness
of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished... the most solemn mystery in the
world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of suspenseand softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but grew more intense. No
one slept.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional
types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin
to invent more natural, true figures.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Reason is often the slave of sin; it strives to justify it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most mentally deranged people are those who see in others indications of insanity
they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The further one goes, the better the land seems. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible".
Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it
unhindered and let it defend itself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis,
which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a
way to man’s consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it
was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against
deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men
to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
