Quotes About Tolstoy

The hero of my tale," Tolstoy wrote when he was just twenty-seven, "whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and always will be beautiful— is Truth.

The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere. "Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him?

The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

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.

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

If there were no external means of dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's reason is the most intolerable condition. And that is the condition of all men of the present day. All men of the modern world exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism between their conscience and their way of life.

If there be a single law governing the actions of men, freewill cannot exist, for man's will would be subject to that law.

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

I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military life;

It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced that no religion is no longer needed.

You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen... All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.

Besides, Oblonsky was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you're going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop short at prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor-- the ape?

In my opinion, it is in the smile of a face that the essence of what we call beauty lies. If the smile heightens the charm of the face, then the face is a beautiful one. If the smile does not alter the face, then the face is an ordinary one. But if the smile spoils the face, then the face is an ugly one indeed. Mamma

Did he suffer very much?" asked Pyotr Ivanovich. "Oh, awfully! For the last moments, hours indeed, he never left off screaming. For three days and nights in succession he screamed incessantly. It was insufferable. I can't understand how I bore it; one could hear it through three closed doors. Ah, what I suffered!

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?

And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her face as if it had been forgotten there.

Well, dear heart,' said he, 'I wanted to tell you about it yesterday, and I have come to do so today. I've never experienced anything like it before. I am in love, my friend!' Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on the sofa beside Prince Andrei. 'With Natasha Rostova, yes?' said he.

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

No one thing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions under which every organic, elemental event of life is accomplished.

Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow, nor the burning of Moscow, nor anything else, could seem of importance to Natasha.

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile.

the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it