“Does it ever happen to you," Natasha said to her brother, when they had settled in the
sitting room, "does it ever happen to you that you feel there's nothing more - nothing; that
everything good has already happened? And it's not really boring, but sad?"
"As if it doesn't!" he said. "It's happened to me that everything's fine, everybody's merry, and it
suddenly comes into my head that it's all tiresome and we all ought to die....”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that
noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed
like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to
stretch them.”
―
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
“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or
she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“the children themselves repaid her griefs with small joys. These joys were so small that
they could not be seen, like gold in the sand, and in her bad moments she saw only the griefs,
only sand; but there were also good moments, when she saw only joys, only gold.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own
body.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of
insanity they do not notice in themselves.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“-Why are you so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness
consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we
live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with
his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as
he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and
makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the
human will.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
