“A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality,
and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of
born freethinker has been appearing, who’ve never even heard that there have been laws of
morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative
ideas about everything, that is savages.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one
loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of
ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not
seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted
of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Why is gambling forbidden while women in costumes which evoke sensuality are not
forbidden? They are a thousand times more dangerous!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Eveyrbody thinks of changing Humanity..and nobody thinks of changing Himself...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons...”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great
freedom in the choice of occupation...is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble
difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is
not gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once.
But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and
spring grass.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while
men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
