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Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Leo Tolstoy quote from classy quote

I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Beheading Death Existence

what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Cheerfulness Childhood Innocence Love

I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me!

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Childhood Tolstoy

What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues-innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection-are our sole objects of pursuit?

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Childhood Tolstoy

Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Childhood Tolstoy

With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Confession Realism Thought

He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Battle Earth Fantasy Night Petya Sky War War And Peace

everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Patience

But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Art Drawing Inspiration Life Perception Writing

I assure you that I sleep anywhere, and always like a dormouse.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Sleep

All great literature is one of two stories, a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy On Writing Storytelling

He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Adultery Regret

It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Regret Soul

Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them...

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Murder

I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Progress Righteousness

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word progress. At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-Where are we to steer?-by saying, We are being carried somewhere.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Life Direction Progress Sailing

During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety, and without wishing for anything.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Life Zen

The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Motherhood

I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Philosophical

The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Admirable Qualities Humanism Personality

How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Irony Levin Love

While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Doubt Mistrust Suspicion

Whether he was acting ill or well he did not know, and far from laying down the law about it, he now avoided talking or thinking about it. Thinking about it led him into doubts and prevented him from seeing what he should and should not do. But when he did not think, but just lived, he unceasingly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge deciding which of two actions was the better and which the worse; and as soon as he did what he should not have done he immediately felt this. In this way he lived, not knowing or seeing any possibility of knowing what he was or why he lived in the world.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Doubt Self Knowledge

One may deal with things without love...but you cannot deal with men without it...It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Humankind Life Love Mankind Natural Laws

At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one's eyes to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the second.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Danger War

If a man decides that it is better for him to resist the demands of a present feeble love, in the name of another, of a future manifestation, he deceives either himself or other people, and loves no one but himself. Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Love Present Present Moment

Love does not exist. There exists the physical need for intercourse, and the rational need for a mate in life.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Comradery Love Lust

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Kindlehighlight

Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Kindlehighlight

Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Kindlehighlight

At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Kindlehighlight

If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Perfection

if they hadn’t both been pretending, but had had what is called a heart-to-heart talk, that is, simply told each other just what they were thinking and feeling, then they would just have looked into each other’s eyes, and Constantine would only have said: ‘You’re dying, dying, dying!’ – while Nicholas would simply have replied: ‘I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, afraid, afraid!’ That’s all they would have said if they’d been talking straight from the heart. But it was impossible to live that way, so Levin tried to do what he’d been trying to do all his life without being able to, what a great many people could do so well, as he observed, and without which life was impossible: he tried to say something different from what he thought, and he always felt it came out false, that his brother caught him out and was irritated by it.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Anna Dying Karenina Leo Levin Tolstoy

Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand. I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Death Life Love Unity

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Change Conscience Conviction Guilt Life Motivation

God knows of love

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Drama

With no doubt Al Hussain was one of the greatest rebels, for correcting the path of rulers who deviated from the right path. He, by his stance honorably acquired martyrdom martyrdom that free people wish to acquire.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Freedom Honor Martyrdom Rebel Religion

It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Blame Criticism Scapegoat Scapegoating

And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Love Platonic Platonic Love Tragedy

Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that someone laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Meaning Of Life
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