Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Only the people who are capable to love immensely can, also, feel immense pain: but that same need of love serves them as the cure against pain and it heals them. Because of that, mental nature is stronger than physical nature. Pain never kills.

For an instant he was offended, but immediately knew he could not be offended with her because she was himself.

he knew his own soul, it was dear to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and did not let anyone into his soul without the key of love.

Be indifferent to other people's opinions about you. Without indifference, you cannot be a free man.

There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however it may end there will always be people to say: "I said then that it would be so," quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures many were to quite the contrary effect.

And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.

It's the salvation as well as the punishment of human beings that when they're living irregular lives, they're able to wrap themselves in a blanket of fog so that they can't see the wretchedness of their situation.

We must live. We must love. And we must believe that there's more to it all than our lives on this scrap of earth.

Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of forgiveness. 'All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much.

Yaln?zca, e?ler aras?nda bildik o seyrek sevgi dakikalar? kalm??t?, onlar da uzun sürmüyordu. Bir süreli?ine mola verdikleri küçük adac?klard? bunlar. Sonra birbirine yabanc?la?man?n gizlenmi? dü?manl??? denizine aç?l?yorlard? yeniden.

He prayed for purity, humility, love, and now it seemed to him that God heard his prayers. He had not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity.

Did he suffer very much?" asked Pyotr Ivanovich. "Oh, awfully! For the last moments, hours indeed, he never left off screaming. For three days and nights in succession he screamed incessantly. It was insufferable. I can't understand how I bore it; one could hear it through three closed doors. Ah, what I suffered!

every man was conscious of his own insignificance, aware that he was but a grain of sand in that ocean of humanity, and yet at the same time had a sense of power as a part of that vast whole.

Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy . . . (tr Benjamin Sher)

Even Karenin, who might well have turned out to be a flat caricature with his stick-out ears and cracking knuckles, is endowed with a complex personality as the other characters see him differently on different occasions: when Anna sees him at the Petersburg station, when he is at his government desk, when his son recoils from his embrace, when he is at the interview with his divorce lawyer, when

I happened to observe a mother lifting her eight-year-old boy in her arms. As she did so she laughed and said, "You're getting so big you'll be lifting me soon." It was the simplest of statements. Yet I felt something transiently touching about the scene merely because millions upon millions of mothers reaching back into the dawn of history must have said the same thing to their children at some time and because other millions will say it in the remote future long

Our feet have reached the holy places, but our hearts may not have done so.

If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,

Tudo aquilo de que viveste e de que vives é uma mentira, um embuste, que oculta de ti a vida e a morte

The aim of civilization is to enable us to get enjoyment out of everything. - Well, if that is its aim, I'd rather be a savage.

without having to consider to what class they belonged. They all belonged to human race which without his thinking about it, all appeared dear to Olenin and they all treated him in a friendly manner way.

He entered his wife's drawing-room as one enters a theatre, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased to see everyone and equally indifferent to them all.

And people strive not for the good in life, but for goods they can call their own

The less importance he attached to the opinion of men, the more did he feel the presence of God within him.