“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with
divine love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, not love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material
poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap
newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be
calm, happy, and noble.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-
sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an
expression of one fact of human endeavor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better; and
therefore, those who wish to improve life must direct all their efforts towards changing both
their own and other people’s consciousness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But live while you live, tomorrow you die...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The doctrine of Christ, which teaches love, humility, and self-denial, had always attracted
me. But I found a contrary law, both in the history of the past and in the present organization of
our lives – a law repugnant to my heart, my conscience, and my reason, but one that flattered
my animal instincts. I knew that if I accepted the doctrine of Christ, I should be forsaken,
miserable, persecuted, and sorrowing, as Christ tells us His followers will be. I knew that if I
accepted that law of man, I should have the approbation of my fellow-men; I should be at
peace and in safety; all possible sophisms would be at hand to quiet my conscience and I
should ‘laugh and be merry,’ as Christ says. I felt this, and therefore I avoided a closer
examination of the law of Christ, and tried to comprehend it in a way that should not prevent
my still leading my animal life. But, finding that impossible, I desisted from all attempts at
comprehension.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not
formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most
intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt,
what is laid before him.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied
him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered
everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that his undertaking was the
only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining
strength.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How strange, extraordinary, and joyful it was to her to think that her son - the little son,
whose tiny limbs had faintly stirred within her twenty years ago, for whose sake she had so
often quarreled with the count, who would spoil him, the little son, who had first learnt to say
grusha, and then had learnt to say baba - that that son was now in a foreign land, in strange
surroundings, a manly warrior, alone without help or guidance, doing there his proper manly
work. All the world-wide experience of ages, proving that children do imperceptibly from the
cradle grow up into men, did not exist for the countess. The growth of her son had been for
her at every strage of his growth just as extraordinary as though millions of millions of men
had not grown up in the same way. Just as, twenty years before, she could not believe that the
little creature that was lying somewhere under her heart, would one day cry and learn to talk,
now she could not believe that the same little creature could be that strong, brave man, that
paragon of sons and of men that, judging by this letter, he was now.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
