Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

But the time has come to realize that I can no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, that I am not to blame, and that God created me as a person who needs to love and to live.

But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Hélène Bezukhova's reputation d'une femme charmante et spirituelle2 became so firmly established that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and yet everybody would go into raptures over every word of hers, and look for a profound meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.

E, abrigando os olhos com a mão, consultou o sol.

If everybody fought for nothing but his own convictions, there wouldn't be any wars,

women are the pivot on which everything turns!

Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.

Si hay tantas cabezas como maneras de pensar, hay tantos corazones como maneras de amar.

One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead, lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But

she lives for God imagining that she lives for men..One good deed - a cup of water given without the thought of reward - is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. ..My share of sincere desire to serve God was there, but it was all soiled and overgrown by desire for human praise..

To the question of what causes historic events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of human events is predetermined from on high—depends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's influence on the course of these events is purely external and fictitious.

Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it.

He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.

A saint prayed to God in the following way: "O God, please be kind to evil people as much as you are to kind people. Kind people already feel good, because they are kind." —MUSLIH-UD-DIN SAADI

the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful life.

Life meanwhile—real life, with its essential interests of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions—went on as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction.

It's not enough that i know all that's in me, everyone else must know it, too: Pierre, and that girl who wanted to fly into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life is not only for myself; so that they don't live like that girl, independently of my life, but so that it is reflected in everyone, and they all live together with me!

People who are given to deliberating on their actions generally find themselves in a serious frame of mind when it comes to embarking on a journey or changing their mode of life. At such moments one reviews the past and forms plans for the future.

I was afraid of life and strove against it, yet I still hoped for something from it.

If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness. If it has a consequence, a reward, it is also not goodness. Therefore, goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect. It is exactly this that I know and that we all know. What greater miracle could there be than that?

The loathing which Nekhludoff felt increased with the reading of the description. Katiousha's life, the sanies running from the nostrils, the eyes that came out of their sockets, and his conduct toward her—all seemed to him to belong to the same order, and he was surrounded and swallowed up by these things.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

A little further on, you see an old soldier changing his linen. His face and body are of a sort of cinnamon-brown color, and gaunt as a skeleton. He has no arm at all; it has been cut off at the shoulder. He is sitting with a wideawake air, he puts himself to rights ; but you see, by his dull, corpse-like gaze, his frightful gaunt-ness, and the wrinkles on his face, that he is a being who has suffered for the best part of his life.

The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the world!

Looking into Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrei thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain.