“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”

Leo Tolstoy

“The doctrine of Christ, which teaches love, humility, and self-denial, had always attracted me. But I found a contrary law, both in the history of the past and in the present organization of our lives – a law repugnant to my heart, my conscience, and my reason, but one that flattered my animal instincts. I knew that if I accepted the doctrine of Christ, I should be forsaken, miserable, persecuted, and sorrowing, as Christ tells us His followers will be. I knew that if I accepted that law of man, I should have the approbation of my fellow-men; I should be at peace and in safety; all possible sophisms would be at hand to quiet my conscience and I should ‘laugh and be merry,’ as Christ says. I felt this, and therefore I avoided a closer examination of the law of Christ, and tried to comprehend it in a way that should not prevent my still leading my animal life. But, finding that impossible, I desisted from all attempts at comprehension.”

Leo Tolstoy

“And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what is called allegiance.”

Leo Tolstoy

“What is precious is not the reward but the work. And I wish you to understand that. If you work and study in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard to you; but when you work, if you love the work, you will find your reward in that.”

Leo Tolstoy

“nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.

Leo Tolstoy

“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”

Leo Tolstoy

“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we do them”

Leo Tolstoy

“It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me!... But to whom should I say this? To some power--- indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words---The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important!”

Leo Tolstoy

“but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

Leo Tolstoy

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have know what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death--complete annihilation.”

Leo Tolstoy

“As though tears were the indispensable oil without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sister, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other.”

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

“There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.”

Leo Tolstoy

“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.”

Leo Tolstoy


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