|
58e3735
|
When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irr..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
e0a68b8
|
And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre's eyes gli..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
1f74623
|
Time and Patience.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
a6d7c26
|
There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
d397446
|
Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.
|
|
inspirational
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
300479e
|
Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes...
|
|
reason
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
9de6d34
|
She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self
|
|
love
leo-tolstoy
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
72c9ca3
|
The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.
|
|
day
tolstoy
labor
lord
rewards
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
1a2c7c1
|
A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
765c317
|
I often think how unfairly life's good fortune is sometimes distributed.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
04979dc
|
He never chooses an opinion, he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
dbb9c8c
|
A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.
|
|
war
defeat
defeatism
victory
win
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
81384ab
|
Yes, there is something uncanny, demonic and fascinating in her.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
407df27
|
No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be able to leave it.
|
|
readiness
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
8bdc715
|
It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
bd29116
|
I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
b1deabe
|
Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.
|
|
religion
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
1fc823e
|
I didn't know you were going. What are you coming for?" she said, letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the doorpost. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face. "What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said, "I can't help it."
|
|
vronsky
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
7cc5312
|
Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.
|
|
sadness
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
95e2226
|
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 ..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
c5fbe40
|
It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
9f25e18
|
There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
9370864
|
False. Everything by which you have lived and live now is all a deception, a lie, concealing both life and death from you.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
3451466
|
They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being. With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the law cour..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
d41a2b5
|
I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
b811fc8
|
Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
b79fa8a
|
He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.
|
|
reason
life
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
9b73acc
|
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
|
|
life
questions-in-life
dying
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
0e690a0
|
Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and worthy of a man of this age to hold a position from which he receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take from the people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments of butchery, so as to make war on people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who feel the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devo..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
7819014
|
Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
609d2f9
|
In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertake. Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement ..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
2460907
|
I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.
|
|
world
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
5e20001
|
My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
75472ef
|
What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.
|
|
convincing
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
9e1c5ab
|
The more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it, Yes it was terrible but true
|
|
death
life
leo-tolstoy
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
ac2ebae
|
Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. It seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service. '..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
520379b
|
for nightinggales - we know - can't live on fairytales.
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
1dfa58e
|
All his life the example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal" - had seemed to him to be true only in relation to Caius the man, man in general, and it was quite justified , but he wasn't Caius and he wasn't man in general, and he had always been something quite, quite special apart from all other beings; he was Vanya, with Mama, with Papa, with Mitya and Volodya, ..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
98abd4a
|
If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
bd3af4c
|
Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't got.
|
|
happiness
life
inspirational
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
6514143
|
There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in..
|
|
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
7f6d526
|
Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.
|
|
dissent
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
9f3228c
|
What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside.
|
|
healing
wound
soul
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
8158cd7
|
Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.
|
|
death
philosophy
|
Leo Tolstoy |