Quotes About Change

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.

You live in better style than we do, but though you often earn more than you need, you are very likely to lose all you have. You know the proverb, 'Loss and gain are brothers twain.' It often happens that people who are wealthy one day are begging their bread the next.

The danger lies not in the imaginary hydra of revolution, but in a stubborn traditionalism that impedes progress.

Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in innocent sufferings.

The news of Kitty's friendship with Mme Stahl and Varenka, and the observations conveyed to him by the princess about some change that had taken place in Kitty, troubled the prince and provoked in him the usual feeling of jealousy towards everything that interested his daughter to the exclusion of himself, and a fear lest his daughter escape from his influence into some spheres inaccessible to him.

Se?am se da sam u jednom od stotine romana koje sam to leto pro?itao našao jednog preterano strasnog junaka s gustim obrvama i toliko sam zaželeo da li?im na njega po spoljašnjosti (moralno sam se ose?ao sasvim isti on), da sam posmatraju?i svoje obrve pred ogledalom došao na misao da ih malo podšišam, da bi mi porasle guš?e.

Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera—mentioning "our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "our days" and that human characteristics change with the times—

Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilities: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man.

hydra of revolution,

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed – none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.

Yes, life was there and now it's going, going, and I can't hold onto it.

From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped scarf for him.

All that world, that sky, that garden, that air, were not the same as I had known.

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.

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.

that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her,

and new conditions of existence will spring up, to which other men will grow just as accustomed, and I shall not know about them, for I shall be no more!

Everyone sees that this cannot go on. Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break," said Pierre (as those wha examine the actions of any government have always said since governments began).

Böyle i?te, diyordu. Dostumuz Konstantin Dmitriç ne yetenekli bir gençti. Oysa ?imdi nerede o eski Konstantin Dmitriç! O zamanlar bilimi de severdi. Üniversiteden ç?kt???nda insanlara özgü dü?ünceleri vard?. ?imdi ise yeteneklerinin yar?s? kendi kendini aldatmaya, öteki yar?s? da bu aldat??? hakl? göstermeye yönelmi? durumda. ileti?im yay?nlar?. syf :441.

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say this to you,

But, as always happens after death, his face had grown handsomer, more dignified—more distinguished, in short, than it had ever been in life.

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonsky's household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing, immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness full of significance.

For a long time afterwards, in prison, when moral change took place in me, I thought of that moment, recalled what I could of it, and considered it. I remembered for an instant, before the action I had a terrible consciousness I was killing a defenseless woman, my wife!

After reading Tolstoy's lengthy essay "On Life" in 1889, Ernest Crosby, a thirty-three-year-old American diplomat who was working in Egypt at the time, decided that diplomacy wasn't his calling and instead dedicated the next twenty-seven years of his life to writing and lecturing about Tolstoy throughout the United States.