Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Postovanje je izmisljeno da se sakrije praznina gde bi trebalo da bude ljubav. A ako me vise ne volis, onda je bolje i postenije da mi to kazes.

I wanted feeling to guide us in life, and not life to be the guide to feeling.

Yes, there it is. Well, then, let there be pain. "And death? Where is it?" He sought his old habitual fear of death and could not find it. Where was it? What death? There was no more fear because there was no more death. Instead of death there was light.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural and essential official duty—so familiar to everyone in the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders—that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of his existence—and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the races and in the summer villas.

There is not in me what you are looking for... Why deceive ourselves?

He had known at the bottom of his heart that he would see her here today. But to keep his thoughts free, he had tried to persuade himself that he did not know it. Now when he heard that she was here, he was suddenly conscious of such delight, and at the same time of such dread, that his breath failed him and he could not utter what he wanted to say.

She doesn't stand up because her legs are too short. She's a very bad figure.

I think the motive force of all our action is, after all, personal happiness.

The most important and necessary human deed, for both doer and recipient, are those of which he does not see the results.

Can't you go tomorrow?' she said. 'No, I can't! The business I'm going for, the warrant and the money, won't have come by tomorrow,' he replied.

It is dreadful that one cannot tear the past out by the roots.

Her clothes, her figure, the expression of her face, the sound of her voice--all these said to him: 'Not the real thing. Everything you lived by and still live by is a lie, a deception that blinds you from the reality of life and death.

There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him and tenderness--soft, timid tenderness--and promise and hope and love for him, which he could not but believe in and which choked him with happiness.

Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attai its highest mainfestation only in conjunction with all kinds of art.

Throughout the performance Levin felt like a deaf person watching a dance. He was quite perplexed when the music stopped and felt very tired as a result of strained attention quite unrewarded.

He did not know that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings. Levin knew she was listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him. And this was the only thing that interested him.

Lying on his back, he gazed up now into the high, cloudless sky. "Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it.

The one thing necessary in life, as in art is to tell the truth.

But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of there own, yet not a conversation but a sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of joyful terror before the unknown into which they were entering.

A thought can advance your life in the right direction only when it answers questions which were asked by your soul. A thought which was first borrowed from someone else and then accepted by your mind and memory does not really much influence your life, and sometimes leads you in the wrong direction. Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.

Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger—yes, a complete stranger!" With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself—stranger.

The struggle for existence and hatred are the only things that unite people.

The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere. "Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him?

All the cruellest words a coarse man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as if he had actually said them to her.