“We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done
them.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she
thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for
getting on.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however
cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty
or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess
of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the
production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union
among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and
progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she
could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are men who call land theirs, yet have never set eyes on that land and have never
trodden it. There are men who call other men theirs, but yet have never set eyes on the other
men, and their sole relation to those other men consists of doing them evil. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty
recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that
then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out
of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew
that what bound him to her could not be broken.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army because he
wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought
his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a genius”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked,
would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say,
for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon
as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new
and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal
before us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the
gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet
gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that
same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the
human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the
means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too
depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee
everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one's eyes
to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a
man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the
second.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“We should always try to find those things which do not separate us from other people but
which unite us. To work against each other, to be angry and turn your back on each other, is
to work against nature. —MARCUS AURELIUS”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all
satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
