Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

No te equivocas, estaba desesperada y no puedo dejar de estarlo. Mientras te escucho pienso en él. Lo amo, soy su amante. No te puedo soportar, te tengo miedo y te odio… Puedes hacer conmigo lo que quieras.

He imposes the cross. He also gives the strength

I asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?" And I replied to quite another question: "What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?" With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: "None.

This famous Prussian neutrality is nothing but a trap.

does it ever happen to you to feel as if there were nothing more to come—nothing; that everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?

When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his mother. She stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell asleep.

So many memories of the past rise up when you try to resurrect in your imagination the features of a beloved being, that peering through those memories you see the features dimly, as if through tears - the tears of imagination.

In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their proximity to the head of the government may be.

Tal vez la facultad de ver los defectos propios sea un hermoso rasgo de nuestro carácter. Pero los exageramos y nos consolamos de ellos con la ironía que tenemos siempre en los labios.

War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.

In captivity, in the shed, Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity;

I was shy by nature, and rendered worse in that respect by a consciousness of my own ugliness. I am certain that nothing so much influences the development of a man as his exterior—though the exterior itself less than his belief in its plainness or beauty.

Rastopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative circles and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed himself to be guiding. Ever

The second way out is epicureanism. It consists, while knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of it within reach.

I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I

I am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold, his clothes maybe tattered, he may feel ashamed, but he is not unhappy. Me unhappy? No, this is my happiness.

Alexei Alexandrovich, in my opinion, is simply stupid. I say it in a whisper...Doesn't that make everything clear? Before, when I was told to find him intelligent, I kept searching and found myself stupid for not seeing his intelligence; but as soon as I say "He's stupid" in a whisper - everything becomes so clear, doesn't it?

It is impossible to imagine to oneself a man who has no freedom otherwise as deprived of life

Wo nicht Einfachheit, Güte und Wahrhaftigkeit ist, gibt es auch keine Größe.

Vera, judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.

No one is thinking of war; only milliards are being spent upon preparations for it, and millions of men are under arms in France and Russia.

Anna married an older man of position, as young women had done for centuries before and continue to do now.

Ma come si può vivere solo per se stessi?" domandò Pierre accalorandosi. "E tuo figlio, tua sorella, tuo padre?" "Ma loro sono pur sempre me stesso, loro non sono gli altri," rispose il principe Andrej. "Gli altri, invece, le prochain, come lo chiami tu, come lo chiama la principessina Mar'ja, sono la fonte principale dell'errore e del male.

no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions,