“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he
was here to be where she was.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“ٰ "The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one
suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had
long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed
to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything,
simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to
be quite the opposite.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She did worse than break the law, she broke the rules”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and
the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary of
hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting
for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were
already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of willbut he serves as an
unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once
committed is irrecvocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others,
has an historical value... 'The hearts of kinds are in the hand of God.' The king is the slave of
history... Every action that seems to them an act of their own freewill, is in an historical sense
not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all
eternity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my
life?
Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty,
to love the statue of a woman?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in
words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people,
appears to be impossible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the
dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of
intellect.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the
law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for
instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and
efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when
lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks
with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of
supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself
and having a deleterious effect on government service.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
