“There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a
ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at
the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor
fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast,
neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So
he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to
it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that
awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he
looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way
round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it
and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and
knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of
honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I
am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me,
ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And Itry licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white
mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am
hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only
one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them.
And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become
confused.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's
life. Her love for Rostov was not then a source of torment or agitation to her. That love had by
then filled her whole soul and become an inseparable part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Of late Princess Marya was convinced- though she never clearly in so
many words admitted it to herself- that she loved and was beloved.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness,
he occasionally spent nights at his desk.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it
up, and split twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and split them all. Then he lost his temper,
scattered the peas in all directions and ran away”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten--death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that
bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“ٰ "The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one
suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that
there is such a thing as death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who,
quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman
whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity
of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated
without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more
deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”
―
Leo Tolstoy