Leon Tolstoi Quotes

The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.

But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

All is vanity, all is delusion, except those infinite heavens.

If one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be...

A desire of desires: the melancholy.

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

The terrible thing is that it's impossible to tear the past out by the roots.

In everything near and comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless.

Drops Dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.

For him words took away the beauty of what he saw.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

This prince enjoyed exceptionally good health, even for a prince ; and, owing to his gymnastic exercises and the scrupulous care he took of himself, notwithstanding the excesses to which he let his love for pleasure carry him, he remained as fresh as a great, green, shiny Dutch cucumber.

Understand that this isn't love. I have been in love but this is not the same. This is not my feeling, but some external force taking possession of me. I left because I decided it could not be, you understand, like a happiness that doesn't exist on earth; but I have struggled with myself and I see that without it there is no life.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

But how do schools help matters?" "They give the peasant fresh wants.

But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe.

Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it.

The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are meaningless.

My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but the news which I have inspires me yet more.