“This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought
of the writer or reformer. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was
only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of
life. It was she. It was Kitty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“God gave the day, God gave the strength.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these
blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I
wish to destroy that by which I live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot
change.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the
earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier,
because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To claim that the supernatural and irrational form the basic characteristics of religion is
much the same as noticing only the rotten apples and then claiming that the basic features of
the fruit named apple are a flaccid bitterness and a harmful effect produced in the stomach.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I can never forget what is my whole life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Levin had often noticed in arguments between even the most intelligent people that after
enormous efforts, an enormous number of logical subtleties and words, the arguers would
finally come to the awareness that what they had spent so long struggling to prove to each
other had been known to them long, long before, from the beginning of the argument, but that
they loved different things and therefore did not want to name what they loved, so as not to be
challenged. He had often felt that sometimes during an argument you would understand what
your opponent loves, and suddenly come to love the same thing yourself, and agree all at
once, and then all reasonings would fall away as superfluous; and sometimes it was the other
way round: you would finally say what you yourself love, for the sake of which you are
inventing your reasonings, and if you happened to say it well and sincerely, the opponent
would suddenly agree and stop arguing. That was the very thing he wanted to say.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all
around him are living in the same way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
