“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's
minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike...What Pierre chiefly
desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he
said was very witty or very stupid.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties,
deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been
darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“[Pierre] involuntarily started comparing these two men, so different and at the same time
so similar, because of the love he had for both of them, and because both had lived and both
had died.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or
desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe,
and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity.”
―
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
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She did worse than break the law, she broke the rules”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Those two drops of honey, which more than all else had diverted my eyes from the cruel
truth, my love for my family and for my writing, which I called art – I no longer found sweet.
―
Leo Tolstoy