“That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery
by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He stepped down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, yet he saw
her as one sees the sun, without looking.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.
Such is the quality of bees...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it
because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or
because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every
action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not
free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,’ he thought. And suddenly at this
thought of death a whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his
imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the
days when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for
himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he
was billeted with Nesvitsky and began to walk up and down before it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life
is possible at all.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Nothing has been discovered, nothing has been invented. We can only know that we know
nothing. And that's the highest degree of human wisdom.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible".
Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“One might murder and steal and yet be happy”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Although on a conscious level a man lives for himself, he is actually being used for the
attainment of humanity's historical aims. A deed once done becomes irrevocable, and any
action comes together over time with millions of actions performed by other people to create
historical significance.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I think...if so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
