Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to their convictions.

His director told him, as material food was necessary for the body life, spiritual food is necessary for spiritual life. This was result of his consciousness of humility, certainty that whatever he had to do was right.

Don't steal rolls.

It's absurd that having started writing rules at fifteen, I should still be writing them at thirty, without having trusted in, or followed a single one, but still for some reason believing in them and wanting them.

Three days and nights of awful suffering and death. Why, that may at once, any minute, come upon me too.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they were bound.

Thus ran his thoughts; he wanted to go to bed, but he felt loath to tear himself away from the book.

You must understand," said he, "it's not love. I've been in love, but it's not that. It's not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I've struggled with myself, I see there's no living without it. And it must be settled.

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine—not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs.

A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion.

At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilych knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to this idea, he simply did not grasp it - he was utterly unable to grasp it.

The most usual conservatives are young people. Young people who want to live, but who do not think and have no time to think about how one should live, and who therefore choose as a model for themselves the life that was.

Pfuel was one of those theorists who love their theory so dearly they lose sight of the aim of all theory, which is to work out in practice. He was so much in love with theory that he hated all practice and didn't want to know about it. He positively rejoiced in failure, because failure was due to practical infringements of his theory, which went to show how right the theory was.

No tenía miedo, no porque se hubiera acostumbrado al fuego - nunca el hombre puede acostumbrarse al peligro -, sino porque sabía dominar su alma.

All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the worst of it all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are the children, I am tied. And I can't live with him! It's torture to see him.

and above all, her smile, which carried him into a fairyland where he felt softened and filled with tenderness as he remembered feeling on rare occasions in his early childhood.

when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.

And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where are you, pain?" He turned his attention to it. "Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be.

Yes, life was there and now it's going, going, and I can't hold onto it.

Trebuie s?-i mul?ume?ti Lui ?i tot Lui s?-i ceri ajutor. Numai în El vom g?si lini?tea, mângâierea, salvarea ?i iubirea, ad?ug? ea ?i, în?l?ându-?i privirea la cer, începu s? se roage, dup? cum în?elese Alexei Alexandrovici din t?cerea ei.

Did the Toyon not see that he, too, had been born like the others—with bright, open eyes, in which heaven and earth were reflected, and with a pure heart which was ready to hearken to all that was beautiful in the world. And if he longed now to hide his miserable and shameful self underground, it was no fault of his, nor did he know whose fault it was. The one thing he knew was that there was no patience left in his heart.

It seems that Pharisee must have been such a man as I am. I, too, apparently have thought only of myself,—how I might have my tea, be warm and comfortable, but never to think about my guest. He thought about himself, but there was not the least care taken of the guest. And who was his guest? The Lord Himself. If He had come to me, should I have done the same way?

Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children.

Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in the interlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path to which I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths, which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, which thou canst follow and thus run without stumbling. KRISHNA. I