Top 827 Quotes & Sayings by Leo Tolstoy - Page 14

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.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.

The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?

At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, 'at one time a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conception of religion, law, and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed. They grow up in ideas of negation in everything - in other words, utter savages.

Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.

One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.

The workmen's revolution, with the terrors of destruction and murder, not only threatens us, but we have already been living upon its verge during the last thirty years, and it is only by various cunning devices that we have been postponing the crisis. The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith to comfort themselves.

There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: 'I said then that it would be so'

People continued regardless of all that leads man forward to try to unite the incompatibles:;: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.

He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320

Children: a torment and nothing more.

The role of the disappointed lover of a maiden or of any single woman might be ridiculous; but the role of a man who was pursuing a married woman, and who made it the purpose of his life at all cost to draw her into adultery, was one which had in it something beautiful and dignified and could never be ridiculous.

Seize the moment of happiness... love and be loved.

There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.

When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.

He felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. He only wished now to be better than he had been formerly

Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his tormenting tragedy is, and will be, the tragedy of the bedroom.

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?

One can often hear from the young people:" I do not want to live according to others` mind. I can think of it myself. " Why should one think of something, when it is already thought about. Take it and go farther, this is the strength of the mankind.

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.

The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child.

When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair!

Well, so it isn't time yet to die, is it?

Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?

A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.

I was now prepared to accept any faith so long as it did not demand a direct denial of reason, which would have been a deceit.

Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men , but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.

He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.

Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly pure.

I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man's course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness.

It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.

One of the most obtuse superstitions is the superstition of the scientists who say that man can exist without faith.

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so...yes, love!

Anna smiled,as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love. . .

In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.

Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?

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 God's joyous world.

The ideas of the wise have been tested by centuries. Everything medium is lost and only original, deep and useful things are left.

Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of other people just as we are, who see the truth as we do...and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it. The Kingdom of God is within you.

If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible, but it more closely suited his manner of life.

but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.