Leo Tolstoy, Война и мир Quotes

If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!

... a man has to think of his soul before everything else.

It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it.

After the doctor's departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.

Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.

We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?

He knew she was there by the joy and terror that took possession of his heart [...] Everything was lit up by her. She was the smile that brightened everything around.

excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous

… for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.

When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust - but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation.

Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service of man.

He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.

History, that is to say, the unconscious, universal life of humanity, in the aggregate, every moment profits by the life of kings for itself, as an instrument for the accomplishment of its own ends.

Prayer is addressed to the personal God, not because he is personal indeed, I know for certain that he is not personal, because personality is limitation, while God is unlimited.

Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support.

Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.

Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith.

This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.

As often happens between men who have chosen different pursuits, each, while in argument justifying the other's activity, despised it in the depth of his heart.

The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life...

Beautiful as seemed mama's face, it became more lovely when she smiled and seemed to enliven everything about her.

The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.

It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.

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

the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.

Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of that will by others.

The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him.

He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal.

It is a rude feeling, because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality, and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict.

It is very difficult to tell the truth.

Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand." - Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}

Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.

I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.

Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made (Latin).

And the cause of everything is that which we call God.

Childhood candor... shall I ever find you again?

I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now." Vronsky

Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid.

Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.

Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.

What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said; "I can't help it.

I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me

Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new.

I am obliged to renounce violence, and abstain from it altogether.

I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.

Is it possible to say what one really feels?

The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals.

We call beauty that which supplies us with a particular pleasure.

Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread".

The question was a fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies?