Famous Quotes by Leo Tolstoy |Short Quotes by Leo Tolstoy| Famous Peoples English Quotes
- In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.
- My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.’
- No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she could reply quite correctly – one thing, her happiness, and her unhappiness.
- I must have physical exercise, or my temper’ll certainly be ruined.
- It will be said, “Patriotism has welded mankind into states, and maintains the unity of states.” But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one’s own state, when this produces terrible evils for all states and nations? For this same patriotism that welded mankind into states is now destroying those same states. If there were but one patriotism say of the English only then it was possible to regard that as conciliatory, or beneficent. But when, as now, there is American patriotism, English, German, French, and Russian, all opposed to one another, in this event, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.
- Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime.
- Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion… peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means – by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspections… It should be obtained by man’s free and joyous activity.
- I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all of God’s joyous world.
- Darkness had fallen upon everything for him, but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.
- If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
- Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.
- The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.
If the purpose of history is to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question — in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible — is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked. - Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
- Truth is … one approach to the attainment of the good, but in and of itself, it is neither the good nor the beautiful … Socrates, Pascal, and others regarded knowledge of the truth with regard to purposeless objects as incongruous with the good … [by] exposing deception, the truth destroys illusion, which is the principal attribute of beauty.
- In order that the conditions of life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one.
- Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be—the tragedy of the bedroom.
- When Levin thought about what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.
- What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is a lie, what is death? What power rules over everything?” he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: “You will die—and everything will end. You will die and learn everything—or stop asking.
- One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely ‘The establishing of a fact.’
- Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.
- If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
- A woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new.
- Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
- She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self
- There was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her.
- So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.
- If one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are, and not as one would like them to be.
- When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own and wept over them, I saw in her the living God and understood what men live by.
- If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.
- Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action.
- The old man… used to say that a nap “after dinner was silver—before dinner, golden.”
- Life could be limitless joy, if we would only take it for what it is, in the way it is given to us.
- It is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.
- Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.
- Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand.
- In our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men.
- Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.
- In a writer, there must always be two people – the writer and the critic.
- In spite of the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.
- You’re not going to be different… you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of happiness which you won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.
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