“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it."
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There are men who call land theirs, yet have never set eyes on that land and have never
trodden it. There are men who call other men theirs, but yet have never set eyes on the other
men, and their sole relation to those other men consists of doing them evil. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry
discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the
holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my
own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason
why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything
that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has
the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it." - Levin”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are
engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is
far from Me.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out
for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested
the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbor and not to
throttle him?. They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told
me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered
the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction
of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others couldn't be
discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
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
“It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
