I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To live in the needs of the day, find forgetfulness.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What is to be done? There was no solution, but the universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. The answer is: one must live in the needs of
the day -- that is, forget oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in
all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second car. And exactly at the
moment when the midpoint between the wheels drew level with her, she threw away the red
bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the car, and with a
light movement, as though she would rise immediately, dropped on her knees. And at the
instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. 'Where am I? What am I doing? What
for?' She tried to get up, to throw herself back; but something huge and merciless struck her
on the head and dragged her down on her back
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the
supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards
himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An
Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and
therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as
an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and
easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows
nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be
known.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me which directs me. I suffer; but
formerly I was dead and only now do I live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the
person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what
he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those
around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to
understand or pity him”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t count life as life without love”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“As though I had been going steadily downhill, imagining that I was going uphill. So it was in
fact. In public opinion I was going uphill, and steadily as I got up it, life was ebbing away from
me....And now the work's done, there's only death.”
―
Leo Tolstoy