“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and
not make a game of it... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have
come to be where you are," he said; "I can't help it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting,” he thought, “but as long as it
remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it;
and—whether one has fallen or resisted—one remains what one was before. But when that
same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and æsthetic feeling and demands our
worship—then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer
distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful!”
―
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
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Speech is silver but silence is golden.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or
endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a
picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is
only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human
being for another.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
