Quotes About Man

Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all? Pierre asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him

The soul of man is the lamp of God,' says a wise Jewish proverb. Man is a weak and miserable creature when God's light is not burning in his soul. But when it burns (and it only burns in souls enlightened by religion), man becomes the most powerful creature in the world. And it cannot be otherwise, for what then works in him is not his own strength, but the strength of God.

Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.

We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom

Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all that ornaments the body.

True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge which man establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and guides his actions.

The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting', he thought, 'but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and - whether one has fallen or resisted - one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship - then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful!

Can it be that there is not enough space for man in this beautiful world, under those immeasurable, starry heavens?

But it is Tolstoy's understanding of life that the fate of each man and woman is determined by forces beyond their control; these forces include the dictatorship of social demands.

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.

Once there is no freedom, there is no man

Then the doctor, a young man, not quite a Nihilist perhaps, but you know, eats with his knife...but a very good doctor.

Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give, and to whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the finite existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death.

Every answer from faith gives the finite existence of man a meaning of the infinite - a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, privations and death. That means in faith alone can one find the meaning and potential of life.

In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when this love has reached its zenith—a moment when it is unconscious, unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it.

The presence of the problem of man's free will, though unexpressed, is felt at every step of history. All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of that question. If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one asks.

Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart.

He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing else.

The recognition of the life of every man as sacred is the first and only basis of all ethics.

there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom.

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;

To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.