Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

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

Always wetweating-always wetweating!

Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.

And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue degenerates, and so on, will be as right and as wrong as the child who stands underneath and says that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.

One can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one's work.

At the meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.

Konstantin Levin non amava parlare delle bellezze della natura né sentirne parlare. Le parole, secondo lui, toglievano la bellezza alle cose che vedeva.

he knew that men who want something are only too ready to arrange all the evidence to suit their wishful thinking and willingly exclude anything that contradicts it.

They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!

Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor's visit—a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing something. He

After the dark starry night came a bright, cheerful morning. The snow melted in the sun, the horses galloped swiftly, and to right and left alike passed new and various forests, fields, villages.

You take Seryozha to hurt me," she said, looking at him from under her brows. "You do not love him. . . . Leave me Seryozha!" "Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Goodbye!

But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance - that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so.

But just as the force of gravitation-in itself incomprehensible, though felt by every man- is only so far understood by us as we know the laws of necessity to which it is subject, so too the force of free will, unthinkable in itself, but recognized by the consciousness of every man, is only so far understood as we know the laws of necessity to which it is subject.

What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive.

Everyone had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire.

What is courage—that quality respected in all ages and among all nations? Why is this good quality—contrary to all others—sometimes met with in vicious men? Can it be that to endure danger calmly is merely a physical capacity and that people respect it in the same way that they do a man's tall stature or robust frame? Can a horse be called brave, which

And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy.

Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything.

And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her face as if it had been forgotten there.

He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently trying in vain to find the answer to some question.

Often seeing the success she had with young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not love her.

How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear friend . . . I too . . . All will end in death, all! Death is awful . .