“Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad HER having been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already... it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?”

Leo Tolstoy

“As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died. What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek Him. “What more do you seek?” exclaimed a voice within me. “This is He. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.” “Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.” And more than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me.”

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

“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”

Leo Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy

“The law of God is not to return evil for evil; indeed, if you try in this way to stamp out wickedness it will come upon you all the stronger. It is not difficult for you to kill the man, but his blood will surely stain your own soul. You may think you have killed a bad man--that you have gotten rid of evil--but you will soon find out that the seeds of still greater wickedness have been planted within you.”

Leo Tolstoy

“The best solution is to be kind and good while ignoring the opinions of others.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”

Leo Tolstoy

“oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?”

Leo Tolstoy

“After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? For his hopes for the future? Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him, and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was. This contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.”

Leo Tolstoy

“vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position"

Leo Tolstoy

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.”

Leo Tolstoy

“To get rid of an enemy one must love him. ”

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


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