Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love HER.

I am too proud to ever allow myself to care for a man who does not love me

Let me lie down, Lord, like a stone; let me rise up like new bread.

The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's highest happiness.

When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has outgrown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it.

Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.

Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's wife

Decision it was only necessary for him to concentrate his attention for a few moments and the spirit moved him, and the best possible decision presented itself as though an inner voice had told him what to do.

Levin tried to drink a little coffee, and put a piece of roll into his mouth, but his mouth could do nothing with it. He took the piece out of his mouth, put on his overcoat and went out to walk about again.

God. It all blew off his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul and his love to be?

Nothing does harm if one`s mind is at peace.

It all blew off his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul and his love to be?

Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.

Life as it is leaves one no peace.

It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.

All this was as it should be, because welfare and happiness of the world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse universe the assistence.

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins.

I'm inexcusably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you're frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived through the misery, the dread, and now for a long while past, especially since we've been here, I've been so happy!…

It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.

He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun without looking.

But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything

Don't you know that you are my whole life? But I know no peace and cannot give you any. All of myself, my love...yes. I cannot think of you and myself separately. You and I are one for me.

Besides, to fall out of love and in love at the same time is to love twice as deeply as one did before.