Leo Tolstoy

“I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed. ”

“How can one be well...when one suffers morally?”

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”

“Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.”

“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”

“Love those you hate you.”

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”

“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”

“Anything is better than lies and deceit!”

“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”

“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.”

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”

“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”

“The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.”

“Everything intelligent is so boring.”

“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ”

“Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and more.”

“I know now that people only seem to live when they care only for themselves, and that it is by love for others that they really live. He who has Love has God in him, and is in God - - because God is Love. ”

“According to the biblical tradition the absence of work -- idleness -- was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men -- the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will.”

“Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.”

“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.”

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”

“What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ”

“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

“Music is the shorthand of emotion”

“When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.”

“But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?”

“We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?”

“He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320”

“the superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation...is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation. p 1209”

“Everything seemed pleasant and easy to Nikolai during the first part of his stay in Voronezh and, as generally happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything went well and easily. p 1128”

“All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.”

“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"... p982”

“The Bible legend tells us that the absence of toil - idleness - was a condition of the first man's state of bliss before the Fall. This love of idleness has remained the same in the fallen man, but the curse still lies heavy on the human race....because our moral nature is such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. p 590”

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.”