Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!

But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

اختراع مائة نظرية أسهل مائة مرة من تطبيق نظرية واحدة

It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it.

He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

If the slave-owner of our times has no slave, John, whom he can send to the cesspool, he has five shillings, of which hundreds of such Johns are in such need that the slave-owner of our times may choose any one out of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another, to climb down into the cesspool.

To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them.

Once ... I was offered a lift by some carters ... It was the Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart, with a strong, red, coarse carman, who evidently drank. On entering a village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered. It squealed in a dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig squealed still more loudly and piercingly, broke away from the men, and ran off covered with blood. Being near-sighted I did not see all the details. I saw only the human-looking pink body of the pig and heard its desperate squeal; but the carter saw all the details and watched closely. They caught the pig, knocked it down, and finished cutting: its throat. When its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. 'Do men really not have to answer for such things?' he said.

I don't give a damn unless I'm fond of a person;but I'd sacrifice my life for those I am fond of; the rest I'd throttle if they stood in my way...And you may not believe me but if I still set a value on life it is only because I still hope one day to meet such a heavenly creature who will regenarate me, purify me and elevate me. But you don't understand that.

To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.

"الإيمان بكل بساطة هو تكثيفٌ للحب. ينبغي أن تُحب أكثر، وسيتحول الحب إلى إيمان.
إن الرجل العاشق قد يحسب المرأة التي يحبها أروع امرأة على وجه الأرض، وهذا لون من الإيمان.
ومعدوم الإيمان لا يُمكنه أن يُحب؛ فهو "يُحب" هذه يومًا وتلك بعد عام؛ إن أرواح هؤلاء مُتسكعة شريدة عقيم!"

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

The partisans of aesthetic theory denied that it was their own invention, and professed that it existed in the nature of things and even that it was recognized by the ancient Greeks. But... among the ancient Greeks, due to their low grade (compared to the Christian) moral ideal, their conception of the good was not yet sharply distinguished from their conception of the beautiful. That highest conception of goodness (not identical with beauty and for the most part, contrasting with it) discerned by the Jews even in the time of Isaiah and fully expressed by Christianity, was unknown to the Greeks. It is true that the Greek's foremost thinkers — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle — felt that goodness may not coincide with beauty. ...But notwithstanding all this, they could not quite dismiss the notion that beauty and goodness coincide. And consequently in the language of that period a compound word (καλο-κάγαθια, beauty-goodness) came into use to express that notion. Evidently the Greek sages began to draw close to the perception of goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity, but they got entangled in defining the relationship between goodness and beauty. And it was just this confusion of ideas that those Europeans of a later age ... tried to elevate into law. ... On this misunderstanding the new science of aesthetics was built.

Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.