“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you
deal with incompatibility.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me
to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed
within me, and I began to live once again.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I do not live when I loose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed
myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek
Him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing
what others have not seen.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary of
hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting
for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were
already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.”
―
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
“In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God
spare her that.”
―
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
“I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out
to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it
drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the
right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you
must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not
be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going
home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and
support.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity,
can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them
to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the
fabric of their lives.”
―
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 good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it,
there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I'd be, if I could say now: Lord, have mercy on
me! ... But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an indefinable, unfathomable power, which I not
only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words - the great all or nothing...or it is that
God of whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain,
except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something
incomprehensible but most important!
―
Leo Tolstoy
