Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling...

He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.

In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.

I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.

History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.

Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant!

And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to understand or pity him

The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.

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

The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no resources in herself

Tuhan tahu, tapi menunggu .....

Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance.

I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is very silly but it will pass.

Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand

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.

When Levin thought 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.

How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?... All will end in death, all!

the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.

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.

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.

It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused.