Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Pero ¿qué había sido de aquella llama que en Moscú animaba su rostro haciendo brillar sus ojos y prestando luminosidad a su sonrisa?

But that's just the aim of civilization—to make everything a source of enjoyment.

I'm never going to get married. I'm going to be a ballet-dancer. But don't tell anybody.

I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

It was a curious thing that I who lacked all ability to become "comme il faut," should have assimilated the idea so completely as I did. Possibly it was the fact that it had cost me such enormous labour to acquire that brought about its strenuous development in my mind. I hardly like to think how much of the best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of existence I wasted upon its acquisition.

The artists of various sects, like the theologians of the various sects, mutually exclude and destroy themselves.

He meditated on the the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force which gives man a power of making himself, or even as it seemed to him - of making the universe into anything he wishes.

To settle the matter in his own mind was one thing but to carry it out was another.

Never had I heard from my elders that what I thus did was bad. It is true that there are the ten commandments of the Bible; but the commandments are made only to be recited before the priests at examinations, and even then are not as exacting as the commandments in regard to the use of ut in conditional propositions.

When you carry your burden, you should know that it is good for you to have it. Make the best of this burden and take from it everything which is necessary for your intellectual life, as your stomach takes from food everything necessary for your flesh, or as fire burns brighter after you put some wood on it. —MARCUS AURELIUS

In the depths of his heart he knew that he was dying but, so far from growing used to the idea, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

How can it be that I've never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It's all vanity, it's all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing – that's all there is. But there isn't even that. There's nothing but stillness and peace. Thank God for that!

Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment's hesitation about doing what he ought to do.

Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge—were all respected.

In Varenka she saw that it was only necessary to forget oneself and to love others in order to be at peace, happy, and lovely. And such a person Kitty wished to be. Having now clearly understood what was most important, Kitty was not content merely to delight in it, but immediately with her whole should devoted herself to this newly-revealed life.

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.

It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's done.

He thought of nothing, desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do the best job he could.

She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't,

On the contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive, that's not my fault, so I must live out my live the best I can, without hurting others.

What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all? There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking." But dying was also dreadful.

The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension. All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations.