Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Kitty's face was not there. In place of it, where it used to be, was something dreadful both in it's strained look and in the sound that came from it.

So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live humanity has another irrational knowledge faith which makes it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible.

wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, sinful happiness.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. - W. B. Yeats

He was conscious of not caring as much for the boy as for the girl but did his best to treat them both alike. The boy felt this and did not respond to his father's cold smile.

Tako ?ine rijetki snažni i dosljedni ljudi. Shvativši svu glupost šale kojoj su oni predmet i shvativši da su blaga umrlih ve?a od blaga živih te da je najbolje od svega ne postojati, tako i ?ine te smjesta završavaju s tom glupom šalom kojim god sredstvom: om?a oko vrata, voda, nož kojim probijaju srce, vlakovi na željezni?kim prugama.

This prince enjoyed exceptionally good health, even for a prince ; and, owing to his gymnastic exercises and the scrupulous care he took of himself, notwithstanding the excesses to which he let his love for pleasure carry him, he remained as fresh as a great, green, shiny Dutch cucumber.

Levin resolved the first question at once, with extraordinary ease, though it had seemed so difficult to him before.

Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.

To go, or not to go?' he asked himself; and his inner consciousness answered that he ought not to go: that it could only result in hypocrisy; that it was impossible to restore their relations because it was impossible to render her attractive and capable of exciting love, or to turn him into an old man incapable of love. Nothing except hypocrisy and falsehood could now result—and these were repugnant to his nature.

When we give up all claim to a knowledge of the final end, we shall clearly perceive that just as we cannot invent any flower or seed more truly appropriate to a plant than those it produces, so we cannot imagine any two persons, with all their past in such complete congruity down to the smallest details, with the part they were destined to play.

The more people believe that others can improve their lives, the slower any improvement will occur.

you'll see awful scenes, which shake the soul, you'' see the war, not in correctly, beautifully likable line with music and drums, with raised flags and proudly generals on horses, but in its true image - in blood, sufferings and death.

the most experienced and skilful painter-technician would be unable, for all his mechanical ability, to paint anything unless the boundaries of the content were first revealed to him.

He aqui como acabo mi vida. Nos moriremos y no quedara nada de nosotros. Por que tenemos que pecar, pues?

If you love God with all your soul, then you know your life does not end with your death. They asked a wise man about eternal life: "What will happen to us when this world comes to an end?" He answered, "I do not need the world, and I am not afraid of its end, because I know that my soul is eternal." God

There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life.

he was drawn as naturally to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.

En realidad era lo mismo que suele haber en todas las casas de personas que no son muy ricas, pero que quieren parecerse a los ricos, con lo cual sólo logran parecerse entre sí.

He had said the very thing that her soul desired but that her reason feared.

It's a bad sort of young lady who's only alive when she's being admired, and as soon as she's alone lets herself go altogether and finds no charm in anything - who's all for show, and nothing for herself.

all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same—only to save oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, that dreadful it!

watching the movement of history, we see that every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice versa.

the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself,