“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible
force.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made
(Latin).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of
course.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the
room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a
serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that
moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that anyone can produce
at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand times leave us
cold, and the thousand and first time they set us thrilling and weeping.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“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
“You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go
round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards
the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and
Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides.
The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea,
nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth. If you would only look
up at the heavens, instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand
this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or for your country alone.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is
not gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need
an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-
sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an
expression of one fact of human endeavor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the aim of civilization is to translate everything into enjoyment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
