“In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete
discord between the spouses or loving harmony.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The question of how things will settle down is the only important question...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“... for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without
hurting anybody until death takes over.”
―
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
“If a man lives, then he believes in something. If he didn't believe that one must live for
something, then he wouldn't live. If he doesn't see and doesn't understand the illusoriness of
the finite, he believes in the infinite; if he does understand the illusoriness of the finite, he must
believe in the infinite without which one cannot live.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To improve ourselves, to move toward that goal, perfection, that puts no less a demand on
us for being unattainable, requires solitude, removal from the concerns of everyday life. And
yet constant solitude renders self-improvement impossible, if not pointless. A balance must be
struck between meditating in solitude and then applying this to your everyday life.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days.
The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the
housekeeper, and wrote”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself,
then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to
transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.”
―
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
“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the
going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and
time.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.”
―
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
