Leo Tolstoy Quotes

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

He knew she was there by the joy and fear that overwhelmed his heart.

Stephan Arkadievich chose neither his attitudes nor his opinions, no, the attitudes and opinions came to him on their own, just as he chose neither the style of his hat nor of his coats but got what people were wearing.

There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them. If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question — in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible — is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books. All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.

Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.
[sometimes quoted as "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."]

For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

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.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....

“They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my champions,” thought Kutúzov. He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge.

Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.