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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| bea42b1 | No one pries as effectively into other people's business as those whose business it most definitely is not... What for? For nothing. For the sake of finding out, knowing, penetrating the mystery. Out of an itching need to be able to tell. And often, once these secrets are out, the mysteries broadcast, the enigmas exposed to the light of day, they lead to catastrophe, duels, bankruptcies, ruined families, shattered existences-to the great jo.. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 7181e31 | If they had had a different neighbour, one less sel-absorbed and more concerned for others, a man of normal, charitable instincts, their desperate state would not have gone unnoticed, their distress-signals would have been heard, and perhaps they would have been rescued by now. Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes .. | compassion les-misérables neighbour | Victor Hugo | |
| a430174 | At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so differently. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| f8e2632 | On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 82ccab0 | One day at Fenner's (the university cricket ground at Cambridge), just before the last war, G. H. Hardy and I were talking about Einstein. Hardy had met him several times, and I had recently returned from visiting him. Hardy was saying that in his lifetime there had only been two men in the world, in all the fields of human achievement, science, literature, politics, anything you like, who qualified for the Bradman class. For those not fami.. | archimedes bradman-class cambridge count-lev-nikolayevich-tolstoy einstein g-h-hardy godfrey-hardy godfrey-harold-hardy isaac-newton lenin leo-tolstoy lev-nikolayevich-tolstoy literature newton politics science shakespeare tolstoy vladimir-ilyich-lenin vladimir-lenin william-shakespeare | C.P. Snow | |
| cc61098 | The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| b7a7090 | Will the freshness, lightheartedness, the need for love, and strength of faith which you have in childhood ever return? What better time than when the two best virtues -- innocent joy and the boundless desire for love -- were the only motives in life? | childhood youth | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 574fbf7 | You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some .. | religion the-universe | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 8622bfd | she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| e7e37cc | Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| bcb586f | Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwugen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen, Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"* *"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known happiness!" | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 7828084 | There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assu.. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 9a5b8ae | That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 512d049 | When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 44ab4f5 | I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart. | death existence | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 3e5d616 | Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hea.. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| b0aef62 | The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed quite new to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 90f7f46 | Odurna je zivotinjska priroda zvjeri u covjeku, ali kad je ona u cistom obliku, onda je ti s visine svog dusevnog zivota vidis i prezires, pa ili pao, ili se odrzao - ti ostajes ono sto si bio; ali kad se ta ista zivotinja krije pod toboze estetskim, poetskim ovojem i iziskuje da joj se poklonis, onda sam nestajes u njoj i, obozavajuci zivotinju, ne razlikujes vise dobro od zla. Onda je to uzasno. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| df941d1 | The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting," he thought, "but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and--whether one has fallen or resisted--one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship--then we are swallowed up by it completely and worship animalism, no longer disting.. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 8594760 | Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and were brothers. | peace war | Leo Tolstoy | |
| a515d3a | Nothing's amusing that isn't spiteful. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| fd6ecd3 | 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 | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| f2fd84e | If you feel that you are not free, look for the reason inside you. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 8a1107a | Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hidin.. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| a804327 | The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| aac234f | It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 78229e8 | If you turn to a branch of those sciences that try to give a solution to the questions of life--to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology--there you will find an astounding poverty of thought, a very great lack of clarity, completely unjustified claims to answer questions that lie outside their subject and never-ending contradictions between one thinker and others, and even within himself. If you turn to a branch of the sciences that is.. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| fbd899e | When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed. | historians napoleon right-or-wrong | Leo Tolstoy | |
| a7586fb | Ma koliko nastojali ljudi, kad ih se nekoliko stotina tisuca skupi na jednom, nevelikom mjestu, da iznakaze tu zemlju na kojoj se stiscu; ma kako sabijali kamenje u zemlju da ne bi nista raslo na njoj; ma kako plijevili svaku travku sto probije; ma kako dimili kamenim ugljenom i petrolejem; ma kako obrezivali drvece i ma kako istjerivali sve zivotinje i ptice - proljece je bilo proljece cak i u gradu. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 5b089e6 | The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 25bdbbd | But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all. | war-and-peace | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 91d63b1 | Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of the word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was poss.. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 86603c4 | Don't steal sweet rolls. | love | Leo Tolstoy | |
| a59e285 | As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect--the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth--seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of beauty. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 85421e0 | I'm not living, I'm waiting for a solution that goes on and on being put off. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 2430302 | My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and th.. | progress sailing | Leo Tolstoy | |
| fb601f0 | I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be...." | dolly | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 76ca5c7 | Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 51c9a84 | Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their satin dancing shoes performed their role swiftly, lightly, as if they had wings, while her face was radiant and ecstatic with happiness. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| d591662 | marveling at this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him. | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| d4c5d3b | So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!" | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 2b3b509 | He was not thinking that the Christian law which he had wanted to follow all his life prescribed that he forgive and love his enemies; but the joyful feeling of love and forgiveness of his enemies filled his soul. | inspirational love | Leo Tolstoy | |
| ff8c8cf | He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity | Leo Tolstoy | ||
| 0fcb169 | We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's entire attention is devoted to it. | Leo Tolstoy Louise Maude (Translator) |