“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change
of life or by a change of conscience.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human
wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of
goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious
part in it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and
in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments
when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the
chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds
no outlet in our quiet life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So they are even more frightened than we are,' he thought. 'Why, is this all that's meant by
heroism? And did I do it for the sake of my country? And was he to blame with his dimple and
his blue eyes? How frightened he was! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I kill
him? My hand trembled. And they have given me the St. George's Cross. I can't make it out, I
can't make it out!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only
one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with
only one thing: you can become better yourself”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince
Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her
feel of worship and awe of God.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the
happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our
dreams.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
