Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Why do i live? In the infinity of space, and infinity of time infinitely small particles mutate with infinite complexity. When you understand the laws of these mutations, you'll understand why you live.

But it was not only by this feeling, as Varvara thought, that he was guided. Mingling with his pride, with his need always to be first, was another motive, at which Varvara did not guess - a truly religious urge. His disillusionment in Mary (his betrothed), whom he had imagined such a saint, his feeling of outrage was so cruel that he sank into despair; and despair led him - whither? To God, to the faith of his childhood, which had never lost its hold upon him.

He felt he was himself and did not want to be otherwise. He only wanted to be better than he had been before.

Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One should never overdo

Can this be faith?' he wondered, afraid to believe his happiness. 'My God, thank you!' he said, choking back the rising sobs and with both hands wiping away the tears that filled his eyes.

When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely.

There is not only nothing in common between the churches as such and Christianity, except the name, but they represent two principles fundamentally opposed and antagonistic to one another. One represents pride, violence, self-assertion, stagnation, and death; the other, meekness, penitence, humility, progress, and life. We cannot serve these two masters; we have to choose between them.

I think it delightful too," I said; "but I am sad just because of the beauty of it all. All is so fair and lovely outside of me, while my own heart is confused and baffled and full of vague and unsatisfied longing.

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?

Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he remembered.

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their shyness,

The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures

He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking. On that day of the week and at

And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head.

Here's what the happiness is: it's living for the others.

The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy; it is the negation of Christianity.

In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat him cordially.

Si la fe es para ellos un medio para alcanzar algún fin mundano, a buen seguro que no se trata de fé.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love.

He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything.

Go to the devil, I'm busy.

I felt that my whole life was bound to go on in the same solitude and helpless dreariness, from which I myself had no strength and even no wish to escape.

Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.

Mento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?