Quotes from Tolstoy Leo

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.

Oh how lovely it is!' she kept saying. Look what a moon! Oh, how lovely!…I feel like squatting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, tight – as tight as can be – and flying away!" Prince Andrei, a serious man who thought he had given up on the pleasures of life, hears her from below, and "all at once such an unexpected turmoil of youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, surged up in his heart.

History, that is, the unconscious, common, swarm life of mankind uses every moment of the life of kings as an instrument for its own ends