Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

If we allow that human life can be governed by reason, the possibility of life is annihilated

Speak to her now? But that's just why I'm afraid to speak—because I'm happy now, happy in hope, anyway… . And then?… . But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness!

He had great faith in his own fortune. When planning anything he always felt in advance firmly convinced of success and fate smiled to him.

To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life.

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order and in the assertion that, without Authority there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions.

But it is Tolstoy's understanding of life that the fate of each man and woman is determined by forces beyond their control; these forces include the dictatorship of social demands.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world— woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study.

Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it.

Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also,

He was a passionate adherent of the new ideas and of Speransky, and the busiest purveyor of news in Petersburg, one of those men who choose their opinions like their clothes—according to the fashion—but for that very reason seem the most vehement partisans

Pierre held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it rose and fell.

Is anything--not even happiness but just not torment--possible?

I may have appeared strange and queer then,' he thought, 'but I was not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary, I was then wiser and had more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth understanding in life, because … because I was happy.

He spoke with such complete self-confidence that no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid. He

It is in the mountains that the eagles dwell

I'm not a goose, you're the gooses for crying over nothing

Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike...What Pierre chiefly desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself.

The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature.

It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her feel of worship and awe of God.

Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.

He regarded his whole life as a continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.

Grief is never fatal.

But how do schools help matters?" "They give the peasant fresh wants.

And do you know, there's less charm in life, when one thinks of death, but there's more peace.