“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that
and therefore I cannot live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present
frame of mind might never change.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are
engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is
far from Me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He knew so well this feeling of Levin's, knew that for him all the
girls in the world were divided into two sorts: one sort was all the girls in the world except her,
and these girls had all human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls; the other sort was her
alone, with no weaknesses and higher than everything human.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning,
'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All is over...I have nothing but you, remember that.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own
peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown
to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in
medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the
maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot
occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was
to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that
business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they
were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow
substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were
given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they
satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and
always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that
eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done,
which is felt by those who are suffering.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own
body.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“So it would be, were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a force in men and nations
as in inanimate bodies. In men it takes the form of the psychological principle, so truly
expressed in the words of the Gospel, " They have loved darkness better than light, because
their deeds were evil." This principle shows itself in men not trying to recognise the truth, but to
persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is
a life perfectly consistent with truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. "Yes, it was nice,
very nice. There was a great deal more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words,
or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake." And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside
one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt
about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on
gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out
his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his
bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's
room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the
world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while
the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out
for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
